


The Enigmatic Blake

by aralias



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Harlequin, M/M, One of My Favorites, Pre-Way Back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-05 00:31:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 50,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3098297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/pseuds/aralias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>PWB fic, based on a Mills & Boon/Harlequin summary. </p><p>Secrets</p><p>A spy for the Freedom Party, Roj Blake must foster his notoriety as a rake as a front for his secret activity... Until an undercover exercise almost costs him his life. </p><p>Passion </p><p>Kerr Avon, newly appointed systems analyst for the Aquitar Project, knows only Blake's rakeish reputation. He's unprepared for Blake's surprise proposal of marriage – and the way his body responds to him! </p><p>Espionage!</p><p>Burning desire turns to passion for Blake and Avon, until rumours and whisperings rear their ugly heads. Who is the shadow following Avon's every move? Did Blake really murder his late wife? Just what is this intriguing man hiding?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the summary of a book rather pleasingly entitled ['The Enigmatic Rake'](http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/the-enigmatic-rake) by Ann O'Brien. 
> 
> Warning - at the very least, it _starts_ very Mills  & Boon, though it's never (I hope) out of character for our heroes, either.

Kerr Avon flicked through the pages of the Aquitar Project dossier in front of him, the picture of aristocratic nonchalance. It was standard practice to give Alpha-grade citizens a set of comprehensive documentation referring to their impending job-transfers a _week_ in advance of that transfer. In practice this rarely happened, as most career-realignment officers recognised that standard practice was not always good practice when it came to difficult cases. Most Alphas were difficult cases; Avon was a particularly difficult case. If he’d been allowed to read the dossier for a week, he would have picked it apart and arrived at this transfer meeting with a list of fifty or so reasons why it was an unsuitable placement for him. As it was, with only twenty minutes to study it, he would probably only be able to come up with a maximum of ten.

Eventually he said, “Well, it’s an interesting proposition.”

Mart Emsign allowed himself a small sigh of relief. He had been Avon’s career-realignment officer for the last ten years, and it was not a position he enjoyed. An early attempt to assign Avon to work in the computer-science department of the Dome Pre-School (“but you like computers!”) had almost lost Mart his job. The problem with dealing with Alphas was that they all had powerful friends, even the ones who (like Avon) you felt for sure didn’t have any friends. Alphas were also never happy. But ten years and ten placements later, Mart had developed an eye for the kind of thing that would appeal to his difficult client.

“Then you agree to the transfer?” he asked, trying to keep the hope out of his voice. If Avon heard anything like that, he might refuse the assignment just to be perverse. Alphas did that sort of thing.

“I didn’t say that,” Avon said, and Mart Emsign’s heart sank. “It is an interesting proposition. _But_ ,” he said, flipping the document booklet shut again and smiling broadly in a manner that conveyed precisely no warmth, “I thought we discussed a possible move into _banking_.”

“Yes. That’s right. We did,” Mart agreed, “but there, er, aren’t any positions in banking. At the moment.”

“Have people stopped spending money?” Avon asked.

 _Trick question,_ Mart thought gloomily, but there was no way to get out of it. “I doubt it,” he said.

“So do I,” Avon said. “I spent twenty credits myself only this morning. People are as greedy and thoughtless as ever. I would have thought business was booming. And yet there are no positions available in banking.”

“No _appropriate_ positions,” Mart said carefully. “There are some, ah, entry-level jobs in various institutions - a management consultant is needed at Central. But nothing really that fits your profile. Of course, you _could_ take one of those entry-level jobs,” he said for the pleasure of watching Avon’s eyes narrow dangerously, “but the Administration are anxious that you put your talents to the best use possible. Stretch yourself. We want our citizens to feel challenged and appreciated.”

“That’s very thoughtful of... _the_ _Administration_ ,” Avon said. “But I really think-”

“And you’ll have your own office,” Mart continued, trying not to seem desperate. “And a vastly increased salary to the one you currently draw.”

“Yes, I saw that,” Avon said. Despite his earlier protestations, he looked distinctly tempted.

 _People are as greedy and thoughtless as ever,_ Mart thought to himself. _How well you know yourself._ The proposed sum was about twenty times what Mart was paid in order to find ungrateful prodigies like Avon something to do with themselves. And unlike Avon, there wasn’t much chance of him ever being promoted away from this lousy post. Gamma-grades didn’t need to be entertained and stretched by their work – they just needed to go where they were told and turn up on time.

“All right,” Avon said eventually. “I’ll take it.”

“Excellent!” Mart said.

“On one condition,” Avon said. “Next time we meet, you, Mart, will present me with a job in the Federation Central Bank. No excuses, or you know who will hear about it.”

 _Powerful friends,_ Mart thought, and suppressed a shiver. Still, at least he had a year to try and arrange for just the right people to move on at just the right time for Avon to slide in as the technical architect on a large pension-distribution project or something of the sort. A year was do-able.

Mart gave Avon his best attempt at a smile, and slid a stylus and a datapad displaying Avon’s transfer-orders across the desk. “Sign here please.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

The door to his new office bore a shiny brass plaque that read: _DR K. AVON._ Avon tried not to feel pleased. In real terms, it was just a piece of metal with his name carved onto it. It had probably cost the Administration no more than five credits, but it was a symbol that he was someone to be taken seriously, and symbols had not lost their currency in the Federation simply because religion had been abolished.

There were five other heads of department working on the project, which had been founded to try and exploit the properties of a new alloy known as ‘aquitar’. There was distinct and reputable evidence that this alloy might be the key to matter transportation, but unfortunately there had been only limited success on the project thus far. Avon had been brought in as an expert in systems analysis to help the project work out where it might be going wrong. Already, having only read the official announcements, he had some ideas. They might all be dead ends, but it would be interesting to find that out. Interesting enough that he’d been willing to shelve his get-rich-quick scheme for another year. But the bank fraud would wait.

 _Another year of honest living_ , Avon thought with a touch of whimsy. He made eye contact with his reflection in the shiny brass plaque, and grinned – noticing the laughter-lines around his dark, long-lashed eyes deepen and then fade away. _Well_ , he thought, admiring the plaque again, _if this is what you get for honest living, there may be something to be said for it after all._

The other heads of department also had their own offices, but Avon had been reliably assured by Mart that _his_ office was the nicest in the building. While this was gratifying to know, Avon admitted to himself that he would have been pleased even to have a cupboard with his name on it. His office was a place that was marked aside for his particular use, somewhere he could go to get away from the annoying questions and demands of his co-workers, and be on his own. That in itself was as precious as the respect that came with it.

He fingered the edge of the door-release button a moment longer, delaying the pleasure of the reveal a moment longer – and then pressed the button. The door slid open, and Avon beheld his office for the first time.

There was a man in it already – sitting behind the computer on Avon’s new desk and typing into Avon’s keyboard. He had a long, oval face that Avon could see would be handsome from certain angles, and curly auburn hair, which was set off by his green tabard. There were three engineer’s flashes on his sleeve, proclaiming him to be a relatively junior member of the Aquitar Project team. Certainly several positions lower than Avon, although he looked as though he could be younger, so the difference in rank wasn’t necessarily an indication that he was stupid, though it _did_ suggest he lacked ambition. To be an engineer at all, he would have to be an Alpha, though _that_ didn’t necessarily mean he was clever either.

Aware he was being watched, the man glanced up, and then returned to what he was doing.

“I’ll just be a moment,” he said, without apparent embarrassment or interest. He gestured towards one of the other chairs in the room. “You can sit down if you like.”

“I was given to understand that this was Doctor Avon’s office,” Avon said pointedly.

“That’s right,” the man said. “But I’m afraid I’m not him.”

“I - _am_ ,” Avon said.

This provoked a reaction from the man sitting behind his desk, but less of one than Avon had hoped for. A pause in whatever it was he was typing, another glance upwards, and then the intruder’s brown eyes returned to the computer screen.

“Well, I hope you’re better than the last one.”

If the other man had been embarrassed, Avon would have automatically regained the upper hand. As it was, he was momentarily speechless. The reply was bemusing enough in itself (better than the last _what_? The previous occupant of this office?), but more bemusing was the fact that it had been made at all. Even if Avon hadn’t been clearly wearing a section-leader flash on his grey tabard, it would have been obvious to an idiot that he outranked this engineer. The other man was clearly aware of who he was and therefore what his position was on the project, but it didn’t seem to worry him.

“He left in something of a hurry,” the engineer explained, still typing. “The internal-network has been down since his recent and extremely unlamented exit. He also seems to have forgotten to hand in his final report. I doubt we’ll find it useful, but there’s a chance he _may_ have picked up on some things we haven’t already spotted for ourselves. The others wanted to wait for you to show up, but I thought it made sense to get on with what we had.”

The computer made a pinging sound, and he finally stopped typing.

“Ah, I think that’s it finally downloaded.” He pressed another button that presumably ejected the disc drive. “It’s not strictly part of your mandate, but if you could do something about the speed at which these machines operate I think we’d all appreciate it.”

“Am I to understand,” Avon said, “that you’ve broken into my office with the intention of copying restricted material created by my predecessor onto an external disc – a disc you then propose to remove?”

“Assuming you’re able to interpret data and then draw a conclusion,” the engineer said. “As a system’s analyst, I’d hope that would be the minimum requirement for the job, really.”

He stood up, a shiny silver disc held in his hand, and moved towards the door. Avon was still standing in front of it and didn’t move out of the way as the other man approached. He held out a hand and pushed gently back against the engineer’s chest, keeping him in the room. Hopefully his legitimate authority and the gesture would be enough, because if it came to a physical fight, Avon thought he would probably lose. Now the other man had stood, it was clear he was a few inches taller and probably significantly heavier than Avon was. The rush of adrenalin, Avon reasoned, must surely be in response to a flight or flight scenario. That was logical. And more reassuring than the alternative his brain had suggested, which was that the other man smelled far nicer than he had any right to.

The engineer looked pointedly down at the hand on his chest, and then back up to meet Avon’s eyes. “I take it you disapprove,” he said steadily.

Without removing the hand holding the other man at arm’s length, Avon reached back and activated the wall-mounted comm. “Security,” it said in a gruff trooper’s voice. 

“This is Doctor Kerr Avon,” Avon said in its direction. “I’ve detained an intruder in my office.” The intruder in question rolled his eyes, and stepped away from Avon, folding his arms across his chest. “I want him removed. Immediately, if possible.”

“Right away, sir,” the trooper said, with a pleasingly appropriate level of deference, and cut the connection.

“Nobody steals information from me,” Avon said, pitching his tone so it was more conversational – simply a way of imparting information, rather than a threat. He felt in control of the situation again, now the trooper had been called. There was no need to threaten, because all the power was already his.

But for some reason, what he’d said made the other man laugh. “I’m _not_ stealing information. I really _was_ just trying to do my-”

The door slid open, and a new voice said, “Oh, hello Blake. Causing trouble again?”

Avon turned in time to see the trooper push his visor up and grin, clearly no longer taking the situation seriously.

“Breaking and entering,” the engineer – Blake – explained, his eyes still creasing with amusement. He tried to look innocent and wronged. “But for a good cause.”

“I know, I know,” the trooper said. “It always is. What was it this time? More innocent puppies headed for the slaughter? System about to overload and kill us all?”

“Vital reports needed if more than fifty people are to be able to do their jobs, held in a locked computer in this room,” Blake explained.

“Experience says he’s probably telling the truth,” the trooper told Avon, who raised one of his eyebrows in astonishment. Was the man who had broken into his office, with the stated intention of theft, really going to get away with it? Simply because he had a record as a harmless lunatic?

The trooper must have correctly interpreted Avon’s expression, because said more seriously, “Don’t worry, Doctor Avon. I’ll make sure this incident’s added to his record, along with all the others.”

“I like to give my career-realignment officers something interesting to read,” Blake said good-naturedly.

“Yer, you’re selflessness itself,” the trooper said. He pressed the door-release button, and gestured through it with his gun. “Come along, Saint Roj. Let’s get this report written and you can go back to your good works. You busy tonight?”

For some reason Blake glanced at Avon, and then after that momentary hesitation he smiled and said, “Actually - I have a date. With a rather beautiful young man called Leon.”

 _So, he dates men,_ Avon’s brain said before he could tell it to shut up. What impertinent engineers did with their own time was nothing to do with him. Particularly if they were already dating someone else.

“Why am I not surprised?” the trooper said. “Is this the same one as-?”

“Excuse me,” Avon said pointedly, and they turned back towards him. Avon held his hand out, palm upwards. “The disc?”

Roj Blake’s face wore an incredulous, mocking expression, but the trooper nodded. “Go on. Hand it over.”

Blake looked back at him, and then back at Avon, who smiled. “But fifty people _need_ this information,” Blake protested. “We’re not allowed to do anything until we have it. We’re wasting time and,” he added, as though this might convince Avon and the trooper where the other arguments had not, “ _company resources-”_

Avon raised an eyebrow, and Blake clearly saw he’d miss-stepped. Avon did not, in fact, give a damn about the company, or even the Administration in general, except in so far as it continued to support him. Fifty people sitting around somewhere doing nothing wouldn’t damage Avon - it would just look bad on somebody else’s report. Admittedly, it was something of a pointless waste, but not one that would keep Avon up at night.

“All right. Fine. We’ll take a holiday,” Blake concluded. “Another one. Until _you’re_ ready.”

“Earlier you said you thought you’d already spotted most of the errors that were likely to be on this disc,” Avon pointed out. “That would seem to suggest the disc and its contents are somewhat superfluous.”

“Ah, but you see, process _must_ be followed,” Blake said, with an air of irony that suggested this was very far from his own view on the matter. The trooper next to him chuckled, clearly in on the joke. “Either I have the system analyst’s report and act on it accordingly, or,” Blake shrugged “I don’t act at all. My hands are _completely_ tied by the system. There is only exception to that rule, and that would be if I had explicit verbal or written permission from a senior officer.” He smiled disarmingly at Avon. “ _Sir_.”

A small piece of Avon’s brain short-circuited. He forced the rest of it to carry on.

“If I give you permission,” he said, impressed at how casual his voice sounded, “will you wreak havoc on the systems you and your colleagues have been so diligently creating for the past year?”

“Probably,” Blake said. “But as this report will tell you,” he said, holding up the disc but not yet handing it over, “the systems don’t _actually_ work.”

Avon allowed himself a slight smile. “In that case, I formally give you permission to use your initiative,” he said. “Assuming you have any.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’d be disappointed,” Blake said, his voice slightly too warm to be polite in company.

Avon’s eyes widened, and he raised his chin inquiringly. The rest of the conversation had been relatively ambiguous, but now Blake was definitely flirting with him. By accident presumably, because Blake seemed to belatedly realise this too, and shook his head with a smile.

“Head of Engineering’s not going to like it.”

“Then don’t tell him,” Avon said. He plucked the disc from Blake’s hand, and folded his arms, keeping the disc tucked into the crook of his elbow. “You can have the disc back in an hour, once I’ve ascertained that it contains the data you claim it does and no more.”

“All right. I’ll see you in an hour then,” Blake said, with a smile.

Avon almost asked him what on Earth made Blake think that he would deliver the disc personally. As the new systems analyst on a large and badly performing project, he would be exceptionally busy for at least the rest of the week, probably the rest of the month. But as the door shut behind Blake and the trooper, he was glad he hadn’t. Presumably the answer would have been something about how his breathing had quickened whenever Blake had looked at him, or how long he’d kept his hand on Blake’s chest.

Avon shut his eyes and leant against the now closed door. He didn’t need or want this. He’d decided after Tynus and after Lydia that it would be better not to be involved with anyone at all, male or female, and nothing in the past two years had done anything to dissuade him from that view. Caring about other people just made it more likely you would end up in prison. So, he would ignore his overwhelming and undoubtedly foolish attraction to Roj Blake, and get on with his work. Perhaps he would even get someone else to deliver the disc. 

 _Yes_ , Avon thought, relieved. That was the logical thing to do.

*

“I see the network is up and running again,” Blake said without looking up from the dismantled teleport-prototype he was working on. It looked like the one that incinerated whatever was put into it, rather than reducing and transmitting to the other portal. Avon peered closer, and then realised he must be standing in Blake’s light, and moved to his other side.

Blake glanced up at him as he did this, making it rather pointless, and smiled. “Thank you.”

Avon shrugged, though he was pleased Blake had already noticed, and had bothered to thank him for it. Blake’s smile was also rather attractive, as Avon had noted the last time that they’d met.

“And I’ve brought you the disc you were trying to steal earlier,” he said, rather than dwell on Blake’s mouth any further.

“Actually, I brought my own disc,” Blake said, taking the clear plastic case without really looking at it and propping it up against his coffee mug. “It was only the _data_ on it that I was trying to steal.”

He didn’t smile properly this time, but Avon could see amusement tweaking the corner of his mouth. The same thing had happened when the trooper had asked Blake whether he was causing trouble, and it looked like it was his way of laughing at his own jokes. An hour ago that theft had been a contentious issue. Now it had been established that Blake’s motivations had been reasonable and that he hadn’t taken anything he shouldn’t have had access to, the issue had become a shared joke that could bring them together.

Avon held out another plastic case, held loosely between two his fingers. “I’ve also brought you _this_ disc.”

“Which is?” Blake said, taking it.

“My own analysis of prototype thirteen.”

“Ah,” Blake said, his voice rising with curiosity. Unlike when he’d been handed the first disc, he opened the plastic case and removed the disc. “Should I be interested?” he said, sliding it into his computer.

“I think you already are,” Avon said.

Blake glanced up at him, probably to check whether the double meaning had been intended. Avon kept his face neutral, because it had in fact been a mistake.

Eventually Blake said, “True,” in an exceptionally loaded way that sent shivers down Avon’s spine. Then he turned back to the computer screen, which was displaying Avon’s report.

 _I should go,_ Avon thought. _He’s got the disc now. There’s nothing left for me to do here._

Then Blake said, “Ah. So that’s it. You know, we’d all realised that the code was failing about half way through, but I thought it was this bit up here,” he indicated some lines that were supposed to energise the molecules of whatever was being put through the teleport, “and Simmons bet me that it was this bit,” he scrolled down, “because I’d written it.”

He picked up a loose sheet of paper and scrunched it into a ball, which he then hurled across the room. The ball of paper hit another engineer on the side of her head, and she looked up.

“You owe me a drink,” Blake shouted in her direction, “and an apology.”

“Do you have that promise in writing?” she retorted, and Blake chuckled and shook his head.

Avon smiled. “So glad to have been of use,” he said ironically, and tried to walk away.

“Do we know why thirteen’s power went off?” Blake asked.

“Almost,” Avon said, retracing the two steps he had managed to take. He leant down, using  the back of Blake’s chair to prop himself up, so he could get a better look at the screen. “I’ve made some suggestions – it’s down the bottom there.”

He breathed in the smell of Blake’s hair, and without his permission his eyes wandered away from the screen down to the graceful curve of Blake’s neck. Blake wore his shirt collar very loose, so Avon could see quite a lot of his neck and a small amount of his shoulders. There were, Avon noticed, only a few inches between Blake’s shoulders and his own lips.

“Something to work on anyway,” Avon said hurriedly. He straightened up before he accidentally bit a man he hardly knew, in front of fifty junior engineers. “I’ll leave you to get on with it.”

“If you’re planning on looking round the engineering section, I could show you around,” Blake suggested. “Point out which prototypes exploded in what particular order.”

 _You’ve already compromised yourself too much today,_ Avon told himself sternly. So he said, “I think I should probably introduce myself to the head of your division.”

“All right. I’ll show you where his office is then.” Blake made to stand up, but Avon put a hand on his shoulder to keep him in his seat. Then he realised what he’d done, and tried to remove the hand without it being obviously too fast (horrified and embarrassed) or too slow (groping him in public). Blake was not making it easy to leave with dignity intact. Avon made another attempt at it anyway.

“I would hazard a guess that an association with you is not the best way to endear myself to him.”

Blake inclined his head from one side to another. “But I’m surprised you care about making a good first impression. Then again, that _could_ be because the first time we met you tried to have me arrested.”

“You broke into my office.”

“Yes, and look at us now,” Blake said. “Perhaps you should break into _his_ office, as a way of breaking the ice.”

Avon rolled his eyes at that suggestion, and tried to move off in the direction of the executive offices.

“You _will_ have dinner with me?” Blake said, the question only vaguely implied on top of the statement.

It took Avon by surprise, and he almost said _yes_ automatically. _Yes, god, yes._ Instead he said,

“ _Will_ I?”

Blake would undoubtedly be entertaining over dinner, and the idea of having him alone was certainly appealing. Dinner might well lead to... things that could happen after dinner, and Blake would probably be entertaining there too.

Of course, it was obviously a bad idea. Even leaving aside his plan _not_ to date anyone at all, Avon knew that _Blake_ would be a particularly bad choice. Although Blake didn’t seem to actually be a criminal (which put him ahead of most of the people Avon had dated previously), he had a dangerous disregard for the rules, and apparently no fears about being caught. Perhaps nothing bad had ever happened to him, and he hadn’t yet learned to be cautious. But Avon didn’t want to be there when Blake learned that lesson.

Then again, perhaps he could influence Blake – teach him to be more careful.

Rather than reply, Blake raised an eyebrow, keeping the ball in Avon’s court. It had only been seconds, but Avon’s hesitation must be obvious. That meant that Blake knew that Avon wanted to go out with him. _Well, of course he does,_ Avon thought. _You made it very obvious._

The fact was it was too late. To all intents and purposes, he’d essentially decided to pursue Blake (or let himself be pursued) at the point when he’d chosen to bring his report to Blake in person, rather than avoid him until the infatuation diminished. He knew it, and Blake clearly knew it. Why not just say yes, and enjoy the perks of saying yes?

 _Because_ , Avon thought grimly, he still had his pride. There was still the problem of the lovely young man called Leon, whom Blake was supposed to be seeing tonight. Avon knew his own worth – he was attractive, intelligent, amusing, reasonably powerful and well off, with good prospects of becoming wealthier and more powerful in the future. He wasn’t going to play second fiddle to a callow youth, beautiful or otherwise.

But perhaps he was judging Blake too harshly. Blake had met this other person before he’d known Avon as anything more than a name on a door. He’d admitted to the other date in public before he’d known for certain that Avon was interested. And he had seemed guilty about it, even then. Perhaps, if given the opportunity, he would make the right choice.

“Well,” Avon said, “now you mention it, I’m free tonight.”

Blake held his gaze for a moment, as though he knew he was being tested, and then said, “I’m not.” He tapped his index finger against his lips, but Avon no longer found that gesture attractive. Neatly and efficiently he severed his interest in Blake, who (unaware of this) said, “What about Thursday?”

“I don’t think so,” Avon said.

“Friday, then,” Blake said, with slightly more urgency. Clearly he sensed the wind had turned.

Avon smiled thinly, and this time he did manage to walk away.

*

He slept badly, and came in to work on his second day in a foul mood. When he opened the door to his office he found it unoccupied. That made him angry, although of course it would have been awful and inappropriate if Blake _had_ been there.

 _Irrational behaviour already,_ Avon thought with some bitter amusement. _And we’re not even sleeping together._

He worked alone for the first few hours of the morning, and was then called to a meeting with the Pel Hunt, Head of Engineering, about (of all things) his decisions regarding Roj Blake. To do that he’d had to pass Blake’s desk area, and had noted, without really meaning to, that Blake’s chair was empty and his computer was off.

As he had assumed based on Blake’s single comment about his boss, Avon did not like Hunt. The Head of Engineering was a jobsworth, which was in Avon’s eyes a sin more unforgivable than stupidity. If Hunt had ever had an original idea in his life, he had repressed it in favour of absorbing more of the Administration’s doctrines. Avon _was_ in favour of not getting into unnecessary trouble, but he preferred to do this by outsmarting his superiors, rather than viciously adhering to the rules they had set down. Hunt was the sort of man who not only refused to take risks of his own, but also punished those, like Blake, who did.

Currently he was angry that Avon had given Blake and his colleagues permission to start working on the problems inherent in prototype thirteen before the official report had been released.

“It creates _completely_ the wrong impression!”

“How?” Avon asked flatly. He wasn’t really in the mood to defend Blake, but there seemed to be no other choice. “He asked for permission through the appropriate channels, and I gave it to him.”

“Yes,” Hunt said. “You did! I already have enough problems keeping this bunch of miscreants in line without you sticking your oar in and muddying the water. They need a clear chain of command-”

“It seemed to me that what they actually needed was the opportunity to work,” Avon said. “They also needed the data, which I subsequently provided to Blake. I ran the same reports today, and the prototype doesn’t seem to have been damaged as a result of the independent and unsupervised thought to which it was exposed.”

“Yet!” Hunt said. “ _Yet!_ ”

Avon rolled his eyes. When would he be allowed to leave this meeting? Not only was the man a spineless jobsworth – he also didn’t understand when he was being mocked, which rather took the fun out of it.

“And that it should be _Blake_ ,” Hunt continued, “to whom you gave this authority is the very worst part about it.”

“Why? Because he’s the natural leader you can only pretend to be?” Avon asked, mostly to see whether that one would finally hit home.

Hunt’s eyes bulged alarmingly, an effect Avon was rather pleased with. “How dare you?” Hunt spluttered. “Blake? A natural leader? Why that man is nothing more than an over-sexed degenerate, who thinks he can do whatever he likes with impunity because he’s slept with someone on the project board. I suppose you hadn’t even noticed that he didn’t come into work today?”

“Actually I had,” Avon said.

“He’ll have some new boy,” Hunt said. “That’s _always_ what it is. He’ll be in about midday, hungover and distracting the rest of the staff with lewd stories about what he was up to when he _should_ have been at work.”

After about ten more minutes of this, Avon left Hunt’s office and let the door slide shut behind him.

He noticed almost immediately that Blake’s desk was again occupied. Blake himself was slumped in his chair, his face propped on one of his hands. His entire pose suggested a man who wished he were still asleep. He almost certainly didn’t want company, so Avon, who was quite angry with him now, went over to disturb him.

“The faith your superiors have in you is inspiring,” he said when he was right behind Blake’s shoulder.

Blake turned slowly in his chair to look up at Avon, as though any faster movement was impossible. There were dark hollows under his eyes and he was unshaven. He looked rough and dishevelled, which was to say disgustingly attractive.

“I told you he wouldn’t like it,” he said, turning back to his computer screen.

“He’s a fool,” Avon said. “But you’re _not_ much better, are you? Why risk your career over something so trivial? Even an idiot can arrive at work on time.”

Blake laughed in a quick exhalation of air. “Trust me,” he said. “What I’ve been doing is not trivial.”

“Sex is always trivial,” Avon told him.

That seemed to throw Blake for a moment. Then he smiled and said, “You must have been having it with the wrong people. Incidentally, what are you doing on Friday?”

“Something else,” Avon said.

*

“It’s Friday today,” Blake said, letting himself into Avon’s office at about six o’clock on the last working day of the week.

“I’d noticed,” Avon said. Fortunately he was in the middle of writing a rather fiddly test and so he had something to focus on and didn’t look up. “One of us has a problem with telling the time, but it doesn’t seem to be me.”

He was rather proud of the way he’d managed not to seek out Blake since his meeting with Hunt. Unfortunately it was rather pointless if Blake sought him out instead, and ended up lolling attractively in the swivel chair on the other side of Avon’s desk. It wasn’t really as though Avon could have him removed. Blake wasn’t doing anything wrong, he was just being annoying. Avon could leave his own office, of course, but who knew what Blake would get up to if left to his own devices?

“You’re angry with me,” Blake observed.

“No,” Avon said.

Blake had steepled his fingers in front of his face, and now he opened them. “If that’s _true_ , then you might as well have dinner with me tonight.” 

“I am not angry with you,” Avon said, carefully continuing to take notes on the pad on his desk. He allowed himself to glance up at Blake, keeping his expression neutral. “I simply have no interest in you.”

“That’s a shame,” Blake said, as Avon returned to his work again, “but not actually an insurmountable problem.”

“On the contrary, there is no problem at all.”

“Well, there is for me,” Blake said, indignantly enough that Avon looked up. “As you may have guessed, I _am_ interested in you.” He frowned, as though already regretting what he’d said, and rubbed his mouth thoughtfully. “That phrase has been rather misused over the past few centuries. I don’t mean to imply that I’m only interested in you sexually. I _am_ , obviously-”

“After all,” Avon said, “I have a pulse and a penis.”

“Certainly attractive qualities,” Blake agreed, “but my point was that you seem like a more than usually interesting person. _That_ is why I’m interested in you. The fact that you have beautiful eyes and exquisitely defined lips is just a bonus. I _would_ like us to be friends. So, the fact that you find me so comparatively boring is definitely a problem, but as I said – not insurmountable.”

“Because,” Avon said, floundering for a good reply, “you intend to get over your disappointment?”

“ _No_ ,” Blake said. “It’s just that I think I can change your mind. If given the opportunity, of course. Over dinner.”

“You’re irritatingly persistent.”

“Only about things that matter,” Blake said with a smile. He checked his watch. “We should probably go. I have reservations for seven.”

“You’re also annoyingly over-confident,”

“Yes,” Blake agreed. “But like everyone else, I do have my bad points too. Would you like to find out what they are?”

“Not really,” Avon said. “But since I assume you’re paying for dinner, and that you won’t leave unless I say yes, I am willing to accompany you to whatever disreputable establishment you’ve selected to harass me in.”

“Don’t worry,” Blake said. “The harassment comes later - in private, and only if you agree. Though I very much hope you will.”

Avon scowled at him. “Don’t count on it.”

“Would I do a thing like that?” Blake said. He held out a hand, but Avon ignored it.

 

*

The restaurant Blake had chosen was within walking distance of the Aquitar Project headquarters. It wasn’t as exclusive and expensive as a restaurant Avon might have chosen for himself, and it wasn’t very well lit, which was something of an oddity in the domes, where everything was clean and bright and there was nowhere to hide. It didn’t look disreputable exactly. It looked – 

 _Intimate_ , Avon thought as he was ushered into one of the seating booths, which were each lit by flickering candlelight. Even though he didn’t need to be reminded not to lower his guard, he took note of the way all of the staff seemed to know Blake very well.

 _He comes here a lot,_ Avon thought as he watched Blake chatting with the waiter about the other man’s children. _Probably with a different man every time._

It was a shame, though, that Blake was such a scoundrel, because he was good company. They talked for a while about Avon’s initial impressions of the project, and Blake filled in some background details about people or experiments Avon hadn’t had a chance to properly investigate yet. After that, without Avon really noticing it, they slid onto what Avon had done before his transfer to the project, which was improving the navigation systems for new Mark Eight pursuit ships. It transpired that Blake had worked on the design for the same class of ship, and had had contact with Avon’s immediate superior, whom he described as an inspirational force for good, high enough up in the Administration that he might actually be able to make something happen, and whom Avon described as a prat. They spent an enjoyable quarter of an hour while the food arrived debating this issue, and then Blake asked Avon whether he liked anybody at all.

“Not as a general rule,” Avon said.

“Not even your mother?”

Avon laughed – a genuine laugh, rather than the scornful bark he would perhaps have preferred if he hadn’t had a glass of wine already. Strangely Blake, the infamous reprobate, seemed not to be drinking – his glass was largely untouched. “You clearly haven’t met my mother.”

“You haven’t invited me,” Blake pointed out.

“I have a better relationship with my career re-alignment officer, and, as Mart will tell you, we are not close. Other people,” Avon explained, in response to Blake’s questioning eyebrow, “tend to end up disappointing you, if you give them the chance. I’ve decided not to give it to them.”

“Sounds rather sad,” Blake said.

“It’s better than liking everyone,” Avon retorted.

“True,” Blake said. He considered this, with a tilt of his head. “To _some_ extent anyway. I suppose, if you did, you’d have to be willing to turn a blind eye to selfishness, bigotry and institutionalised corruption. You’d have to like people like Hunt. People who put rules before people. Our whole class is riddled with that sort of people, people who should never have been given power, but who have been allowed to ruin the lives of others because of their families, or because they make entertaining conversation over dinner. It’s one of the reasons that this planet, and by all accounts the rest of the Federation, is in such a bad state. People _need_ to be able to see the difference between right and wrong, good and bad-”

He was clearly passionate about this, and his voice was rising above the mingled voices of the rest of their fellow diners. It was a slightly more advanced version of the way he’d almost shouted at Avon when he’d thought Avon might withhold the data his team needed, and Avon found it just as effective. Blake cared about what he was saying – he obviously cared too much, and although it made Avon (who had chosen to care about nothing) anxious, it also made him... _want_ to care.

Which was illogical, and dangerous. Avon had his chin resting on his hands, and now he raised his eyebrow to indicate he was taking in Blake’s rant with ironic detachment.

Blake paused, and looked rather sheepish suddenly, which Avon thought was almost unbearably adorable. “I’m sorry, I’ve just realised – that was supposed to be me, wasn’t it? Liking everyone?”

“Yes, it was,” Avon said, with a grin.

“I don’t like everyone.”

“I gathered that.”

“In fact, I have very high standards,” Blake said, fingering his bottom lip. “You haven’t noticed because you don’t know me very well yet, and because you seem to meet them.”

“Cold, cynical, willing to abuse your personal qualities in public?”

“Intelligent,” Blake said, counting the quality off on one of his fingers, “funny,” he held up another finger, “handsome,” Avon raised his eyebrows, “capable of independent thought,” Blake said, and Avon inclined his head, willing to admit to that one, “brave enough and moral enough to do what’s right, despite the possibility of reprisals,” Blake finished, having reached a whole handful of good points.

“When did I do that?”

Blake smiled at him, and it was like someone had taken Avon’s heart and squeezed it. “When you agreed to let the engineering department get to work without your official report.”

“I’m afraid I did that largely to get you out of my office,” Avon said. “And because it would have been idiotic not to.”

“Oh, well, then.” Blake said, getting up. “I’m sorry, Avon, but this has all been a terrible mistake-”

As Blake began to walk away, Avon reached up and caught his wrist to drag him back toward his seat. With apparent reluctance, Blake allowed himself to be dragged, but the seat he sat down in was the area of bench on Avon’s side of the table. Avon could feel the heat of his body, and smell the wonderful smell of Blake that always made him lose track of the conversation.

Blake’s eyes were heavy on him, and Blake moved closer, and Avon let himself imagine a world where he let Blake lean forward and kiss him. It would be gentle at first, but then Blake would try to pull away and Avon would have to tug him back into the darkness of the booth. He’d push his tongue into Blake’s mouth, and Blake, realising how much Avon wanted him, would chuckle slightly, and put more of his weight on Avon, trapping him where he’d already surrendered.

It was dark in the booth – nobody would be watching. They could do whatever they wanted, and for the moment all Avon wanted was for Blake to make love to him in the middle of this restaurant. Anything to ensure it happened quickly.  When at last Blake finally broke away to lay kisses down Avon’s neck, Avon would say breathlessly, _“What about Leon?”_

And Blake would reply, voice heavy with desire, _“Who’s Leon?”_

In reality, Blake leaned closer. His eyes flicked down to Avon’s mouth, and then back up to meet Avon’s eyes. He moved even closer, so close that Avon thought he could almost feel Blake’s breath on his lips.

“Get back on the other side,” Avon said softly. Blake looked at him reproachfully, and Avon shook his head.

“All right,” Blake said, sitting upright again. He swung back round to the other side of the booth, and grinned at Avon from across the table. “Sir.”

“Don’t do that,” Avon told him. It was simultaneously embarrassing, because he knew how little Blake respected authority and so he knew the title must be intended sarcastically, and embarrassingly arousing. This ‘sir’ business needed to stop, before Avon disgraced himself by climbing over the table and shoving his tongue down Blake’s throat.

Blake grinned. “I got the impression earlier that you liked that.”

“Well, I don’t,” Avon said.

“Speaking of things people like-” Blake said.

“I don’t like it,” Avon repeated.

“I like you,” Blake told him, with another effortlessly sexy grin.

Avon rolled his eyes. “I believe we’ve covered that.”

“Oh dear. Am I still boring you?”

“Excessively,” Avon said. He felt a gentle pressure on his fingertips and, looking down, realised that Blake had stretched out an arm and taken his hand.

 _“Stop that,”_ Avon said, the dangerous growl he’d tried to give his voice presumably softened quite a bit by the smile he knew he hadn’t managed to suppress.

Blake obligingly pulled his hand back, as though Avon had been genuinely threatening, and held both hands up in surrender. “I’m beginning to think you don’t like anything.”

Avon thought about this. “Money,” he said eventually. “Computers-”

The light from the rest of the room dimmed as someone stepped in front of it, and then someone said. “ _Roj!_ ” in an intense, urgent whisper. The person in question was a young-ish man, with dark brown spectacles, who had now slid into the booth next to Blake. He was wearing green, like Blake was, and although he wasn’t exactly handsome there was definitely something about the romantic sweep of his hair and the animation of his face that was distinctly attractive. Avon could see why Blake might be _interested_ in him too.

“Thank goodness you’re here. I’ve been looking everywhere. Eventually I called Bran and he said-”

“Yes, this isn’t really a good time,” Blake said, looking pointedly at Avon.

The other man glanced over to Avon as well, and smiled hurriedly, as though even the time it took him to smile at someone who wasn’t Blake was time he couldn’t really afford to waste. “Hello. I’m really sorry about this, but I’m afraid it _is_ urgent. Well, you know Roj – I’m sure you understand.” 

“You must be Leon,” Avon said as coldly as he could.

“What?” the other man said. “No. Who’s Leon? Oh – is he that young man from last week?” He glanced at Blake for explanation, and Blake, seeming to realise they were at a crisis point, smiled and gestured out into the restaurant.

“Can we talk about this somewhere else, Reeve?”

“Yes, of course,” the other man said, sliding out of the booth. “Of course. Yes,” he said as Blake followed him out. “I’m really sorry about ruining your dinner. But you see, Roj-”

“Please - stay here,” Blake told Avon, with a smile that was presumably supposed to be reassuring. “Order dessert. I’ll be back in a moment.”

He steered the other man away. When Avon leant out of the booth to watch their progress, he saw Blake drape an arm around the other man’s shoulders and draw him in. They entered the bathroom area together.

Some perverse desire to make sure it was as bad as he thought it was forced Avon to get to his feet. He wove around waiters carrying trays, and reached the illuminated sign that indicated the gentleman’s lavatories.

 _I’ll look like a jealous fool if they’re just using the urinals,_ Avon thought. But he had to know, so he pressed his hand to the door-release button.

The door slid open onto an empty room. There were three toilet cubicles inside, only one of which was occupied. As Avon stood there, the door shook from the inside. Blake’s voice said “You can’t be _serious_!” and then he was cut off by something, probably another man’s tongue or perhaps cock in his mouth.

Just for his own piece of mind, Avon tried to adopt an archly amused expression, but he couldn’t quite manage it. There was another thump from inside the cubicle, and Avon turned on his heel and left the bathroom. Then he left the restaurant.

They hadn’t paid for their meal yet, but Blake could cover that. It was really the least he could do if he was going to go off and have sex with someone else in the middle of a date Avon hadn’t even wanted to go on in the first place.

*

Avon spent the weekend feeling alternately furiously angry, and deeply depressed and worthless. Had he driven Blake into another man’s arms by refusing to so much as kiss him? Had all of that business about Blake liking Avon, whether or not sex was on the table, been a lie? Had he just preferred the man with the spectacles to Avon?

 _No_ , Avon reassured himself as he left his apartment for his Saturday morning jog around the Dome edge. Blake had still been flirting with him even after the aborted kiss. And he had tried to get rid of the man who had interrupted their date.

Not that it _had_ been a date, Avon reminded himself while he was supposedly watching a news story about a terrorist attack on a local bank. It wasn’t a date. It was dinner with a colleague that he hadn’t had to pay for. Since he’d already made it very clear to himself and to Blake that he wasn’t going to be ensnared in a relationship, there really wasn’t anything he could reproach Blake with.

Except that it was so incredibly rude and thoughtless. And _even though_ Avon had made it clear to Blake that it wasn’t a date, Blake had been treating it as though it was. Since _Blake_ thought they were on a date, he was surely obliged not to go off with someone else before the bill had even arrived.

Admittedly he _had_ initially tried to get rid of the other man. But perhaps, Avon realised as he waited in line at the library, _perhaps_ that wasn’t because Blake wanted to be rid of someone who wasn’t Avon. Perhaps he had simply been trying to separate two men who both thought they had some romantic hold on him.

Not that Avon imagined anything of the sort, but Blake didn’t know that. He might well think he was protecting his investments.

 _How_ dare _he?_ Avon thought furiously as he waited for the microwave to finish heating Sunday dinner. How _dare_ Blake treat him like this? And _worse_ \- not even call or call round to explain himself.

Not that Avon had ever given Blake his extension number, or his address, but Blake was an enterprising man. If he’d really been as apologetic as he should have been, he would have found the information somewhere and made contact, instead of silently leaving Avon to think the worst of him for two days.

 _I will definitely never go out with him again,_ Avon decided and buried his head under the pillow, forgetting to add _‘not that it_ was _a date’_ to the end of that thought.


	3. Chapter 3

By Monday morning, he’d decided that, at the very least, he should shout at Blake in public and possibly try to get him fired. Unfortunately Blake wasn’t even obliging enough to be at his desk.

“He called in sick this morning,” the woman who usually sat next to Blake explained when she saw Avon hanging around the engineering section.

“Who did?” Avon said, and walked away before she could answer.

 _Fortunately_ , he thought as he walked back to his office, _I’m enterprising too._

It took him only twenty minutes to hack into the Central database and extract Blake’s listed address. Then he recorded a few variations on _‘go away, I’m busy’,_ and set them to play in a recorder hooked up to the door button. He locked his office and, after checking that Blake hadn’t crawled back to work in the time he’d been working on the problem, snuck out through one of the back exits, and took the monorail two stops to Blake’s building.

Almost everyone who lived there was presumably at work, so nobody stopped Avon as he let himself in at the main entrance. Blake’s door was locked, of course, but not very well. Avon had some experience of breaking locks and a small laser-probe hidden in his shoe. Another five minutes later and the door to Blake’s apartment opened.

 _And he can’t complain,_ _either,_ Avon thought, as he pocketed the probe. _Since this is how we met._

He tried not to be too interested in Blake’s furnishings, which was good, because there weren’t many of them. A standard lamp and a table in the hallway; a sofa, a television and a microwave on the floor in the next room he tried, which also had a large window overlooking the monorail; and a double bed, another reading lamp, an unframed mirror propped against the opposite wall to the door, and presumably concealed storage in the bedroom.

Blake was in the bedroom, sitting on the bed facing away from the door, surrounded by the debris of dissolute living – a half-empty bottle of alcohol, a full glass, packets of pills, and what looked like an empty medical syringe and its associated packaging. He was also dirty, his hair seriously dishevelled, and his tunic was torn in several places. In the mirror on the floor, Avon could see that Blake looked almost grey with exhaustion, and seemed to be in the process of cutting the tunic off his body with a pair of scissors that were held awkwardly in his left hand.

Avon gaped at him for a moment, and then he said, “What the _hell_ happened to you?” 

Blake’s eyes flicked to the mirror where Avon was reflected in the doorway, looking worried and angry, and then he turned around fully.

“Avon,” he said, managing to look both bemused and more awake than he had seemed earlier when he’d thought himself alone. “What are you doing in my flat?”

“Answer the question, Blake.”

“I came back to the table and you were gone,” Blake said. “I’m sorry. I tried to contact you-”

“I won’t pretend I’m not interested in what happened to you on Friday,” Avon said, “but what I was _actually_ asking about was your current physical condition.”

“Oh,” Blake said, eyebrows rising in surprise and then lowering into a frown. “ _Yes_. Well,” he said lamely, “I think it looks worse than it is.”

“It looks like your right arm is broken. Possibly in more than one place.”

“All right, perhaps it looks _exactly_ as bad as it is,” Blake conceded. He made another futile attempt with the scissors and, before Avon had realised what he was doing, he’d moved across the room and taken them from Blake’s hands.

“Thank you,” Blake murmured as Avon snipped efficiently through the bottom of his tunic.

“I assume you want the undershirt off as well,” Avon said as he eased the tunic up over Blake’s shoulders. 

Blake nodded and let Avon pull his left sleeve off. “Once I can see the damage, I can splint the arm. And then possibly pass out, depending on how bad I feel.”

“You know, they do that sort of thing for you at the hospital,” Avon pointed out, pulling the collar of Blake’s shirt wide so it would go easily over his head. Pulling the shirt up revealed a large stretch of Blake’s back and Avon’s eyes widened as he saw the crisscross of red marks across it. “They could probably treat these scratches too.”

“ _No_ ,” Blake said, aggressively enough that Avon almost jumped. “No, I don’t want to go to hospital,” he said again, trying to correct himself to a more reasonable volume.

“No. Well, why would you?” Avon said. “After all you have full medical treatment facilities here, without having to leave the comfort of your home.”

“Exactly,” Blake agreed.

Avon rolled his eyes and was about to turn his attention back to the shirt, when Blake grinned slightly to show he understood how ridiculous the situation was. Avon smiled back and carefully pulled the shirt over Blake’s wrist. Not carefully enough, however, as Blake gave an audible gasp that Avon tried very hard not to find attractive.

“It’s all right. I’m all right,” he said reassuringly in response to Avon’s worried expression. It must have hurt quite considerably, though, because when Avon stepped away Blake reached for the glass of alcohol and drained it. His arm, Avon saw, was not only broken – it also looked severely burnt in a pattern Avon could identify from his work on the Mark Eight pursuit ship.

“I assume,” he said slowly, lifting the bottle for Blake so he wouldn’t have to put the glass down in order to pour himself more alcohol, “that the reason you don’t want to go to hospital is something to do with how you sustained these injuries.”

“No,” Blake said levelly. He stood up, rolling his uninjured shoulder. “I just don’t like hospitals.”

“All right. So how did you get the injuries?”

Blake’s eyes flickered shut, and he frowned in frustration and embarrassment. He leant his forehead against the edge of the door. “Sex play,” he said. “Gone wrong.”

“Really,” Avon said. He found this suggestion so ridiculous that he wasn’t even slightly upset at the idea of Blake sleeping with someone else, since that clearly wasn’t what had happened. “And what were you playing at – traitor to the Federation and loyal trooper?”

Blake’s head came up very quickly, considering that he was in a lot of pain, and that he was drugged and drunk and presumably hadn’t slept.

“I recognise the markings on your arm,” Avon explained. “They’re the result of a Federation plasma rifle, set to kill rather than stun, which sounds a little extreme for most forms of recreational activity. Then there are the marks on your back.”

He’d thought Blake might chime in at this point, but Blake remained silent and frowning against the door-frame.

“I’m not sure what they are, but they don’t look good, do they?” Avon continued, impressed at how calm his voice sounded. Whatever had happened to Blake was bound to be serious.  “They’re not really deep enough to be lacerations made with whips or chains. And they’re obviously not marks left by a projectile weapon, at least none that I’ve ever heard of. I’d say they were fingernail marks, but if they were then you’d probably already have admitted it. Claw marks, perhaps-”

“... _Yes_ ,” Blake said after a while. “That’s what they are. Claw marks. Some of the dogs were a little over eager to escape. I hadn’t anticipated that. It was stupid. And then I got shot in the shoulder as I was escaping.”

 _We’re getting to the truth,_ Avon thought triumphantly. Out loud he said, “I hope you’re no longer maintaining that this was all part of a sex act.”

“No,” Blake said, with a bitter chuckle.

“So what it was it?” Avon prompted when Blake seemed unwilling to explain any further.

“Prototype thirteen isn’t ready to test,” Blake said into the wall. “All the pre-flight tests, _your own_ tests, Avon, show that if we put live matter into it then it is highly unlikely that _live_ matter is what we will get out at the other side.”

“I know that,” Avon said. “But I don’t see-”

“There were tests _scheduled_ for today,” Blake said. “The board needs to be assured we are making progress, and the only way to show progress is through empirical testing. The schedule has been kept from us because anyone who has actually worked on the project knows that testing on live animals amounts to slaughter. There were four or five dogs locked away, ready for lab tests today. You see, there would be slightly less paperwork to do, if an animal died than if we pulled in a Delta off the street. That’s the only reason why it wasn’t an actual human being who was set aside for sacrifice. And it’s the same reason they didn’t just grow tissue samples – less paperwork.”

He pressed the cool edge of the glass into one of his temples, and then drained the contents of the glass. “I _know_ it was a futile gesture, but I thought if we _only_ had more time. Even a _day_ -”

He turned back towards Avon at a speed that suggested he’d forgotten how badly he’d been injured. Sure enough, the swiftness of the motion seemed to unbalance him and he might have fallen, if Avon hadn’t stood and caught him round the waist. Avon took the empty glass from Blake’s uninjured hand and dropped it onto the bed. Blake’s free hand closed in the fabric of Avon’s tunic, and his forehead dropped to Avon’s shoulder.

 _Practically an embrace,_ Avon thought, realising that he’d already accepted Blake’s story and dismissed it as unimportant. Or if not unimportant – something that fit neatly within his accepted view of Roj Blake as a man who did stupid, reckless but not overly illegal things to help others. The fact that Blake was breathing warmly against his neck was much more unexpected and unsettling.

“Not a very bright move,” Avon murmured.

“Freeing the dogs, or falling on you?”

“Well, I don’t think either will exactly go down in the history books as your finest hour,” Avon said. He twisted Blake gently round towards the bed, and lowered him onto it.

 _He’s injured,_ Avon told himself firmly as he pulled away from the half-naked object of his affections. _This isn’t sexual. This could never be sexual. And besides, it’s still very likely that he fucked another man in the bathroom while we were on a date._

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t turn me in,” Blake said. “Not that I have any right to ask you for anything, but I would appreciate it. Nobody was hurt.” He yawned, and somehow that seemed to jar his arm and he winced. “Nobody _else_ , anyway.”

Avon stared at him for a moment. Eventually, he said, “What were you planning to use as a splint?” rather than confirm or deny his next move. It was clear that by doing so he’d also be confirming or denying Blake’s hold over him.  

“Look in the bathroom,” Blake said, gesturing towards the door he’d been leaning against earlier. “And there should be bandages in there too.”

Avon left him where he was, and opened the door to Blake’s en suite. Rather unexpectedly there were lengths of strong, inflexible plastic stacked in the bathroom cabinet, along with several rolls of bandages, more drugs, antiseptic wipes, and a single sonic-toothbrush in a glass. It was almost as though Blake _expected_ to customarily break his limbs. But surely even he wasn't _that_ reckless.

Avon returned to the bedroom, where Blake was still lucid enough to splint his own arm, checking at each tie around his arm that he still had circulation in his hand.

“Some of my shirts should be baggy enough to cover it,” he said as he tied the final knot. He nodded towards an area on the wall that presumably concealed a wardrobe. Avon dutifully found the wardrobe, opened it and pulled out a large-sleeved green shirt.

“You know, you’re a very kind man,” Blake said with a smile as Avon handed it to him.

“I doubt anyone else who’d met me would agree,” Avon said, unconsciously becoming more reserved in order to cope with Blake’s increased inebriation.

Blake laughed, and began struggling with his shirt. Eventually when it began clear he couldn’t bend his right arm and that this was going to be a problem, Avon leant in and helped him. The cotton was soft beneath his fingers, as was Blake’s skin when Avon’s fingers accidentally brushed his neck and his shoulders.

“I’m onto you, I’m afraid,” Blake said gently. “I’m sorry if it ruins your image. And while I’m apologising – I should probably say I’m sorry about standing you up at that restaurant. You _certainly_ deserve better. And I’m sorry for lying to-”

Avon kissed him. It was a stupid thing to do, but he couldn’t help it.

Initially he allowed himself just a light press of lips and then, when he was sure Blake wasn’t going to pull away, a deeper, more desperate kiss. Blake let out a sound like a sigh and relaxed into him. He seemed curiously hesitant, as though he were afraid that any minute now Avon would realise this was a terrible idea, blame him for starting it, and then storm out.

Something of the sort _was_ trying to force its way to the top of Avon’s consciousness, but it had to battle its way through a raft of other thoughts that were all some variation on: _at last, at last, at last._

Of their own free will, his hands wandered up to Blake’s face. Avon smoothed his thumbs over Blake’s cheekbones, and into his hair, and this touch seemed to be taken as permission for Blake’s good arm to wrap around his waist. Blake shifted his weight backwards on the bed, pulling Avon gently down with him. Avon tried to move his hands to support himself, and accidentally put his weight on Blake’s splinted arm.

Blake gasped in agony, and Avon sat up hurriedly.

“I’m sorry,” Avon said as he got to his feet.

He was trembling, he realised belatedly. He wasn’t even sure whether it was because he had kissed Blake or because he had hurt him. How ridiculous.

“It’s all right,” Blake said thickly. “It was my fault. I just need to,” he grimaced and flexed his wrist, “ah, ignore it. It’s fine. Come back.”

He looked mussed and desirable, so Avon closed his eyes and turned away. The rational part of his brain was rapidly taking control again now he no longer had his tongue in Blake’s mouth. “I’m sorry, Blake. This was a bad idea.” He took a step forward, opened his eyes and discovered he was facing the wrong way. “I should go.” He turned and made for the actual exit. “I should go. I’m sorry.”

“ _Avon_ ,” Blake called after him as he left the apartment.

*

Avon spent the evening catching up on the work he’d been unable to do during the day because he’d been running around after Blake. This was mostly successful as a distraction technique, except that occasionally he would remember what Blake had said about the prototype being tested and then he would remember the _way_ Blake had said it, and the way Blake had fallen into his arms.

At about nine o’clock he had to stop and take a cold shower.

 _This is ridiculous,_ Avon thought shivering under the water. _I need to get over this, or stay away from him._ An image of Blake’s amused, incredulous expression appeared in his mind in response to that thought, and Avon groaned and pressed his forehead into the tiles, willing his body and his heart to stop ganging up on his better judgement.

After he was effectively cold and miserable, he got out and got dressed. He went back to his work, but his thoughts kept returning to Blake. And how he had finally kissed Blake. And how it had felt to lie on top of Blake with Blake’s arms around him, even if just for a moment.

 _Get over him?_ Avon thought, staring through a line of calculations. _Impossible_. _Stay away from him? Also, apparently, impossible._

_But I can’t go on like this either._

_*_

He woke early and went into work so that he could remove the recording attached to the door before anyone else arrived on site.

“I’ve told you before – I want to be left alone,” his own voice said from inside his office when Avon pressed his hand to the door button.

“Ah, but you don’t mean that,” Avon said whimsically as the door opened.

He removed the recording-cube from the player, and crushed the cube in his hand. It occurred to him briefly that he might have successfully analysed himself for the first time. Then he let himself wonder whether Blake had managed to get into work this morning. Then he bared his teeth in a self-mocking snarl, and went to turn on his computer.

It took an hour to transfer the work he’d done the previous night onto the network, and update it based on what the engineering team had done during his absence.

By that time, the rest of the Project team had begun to trickle in, and Avon left his office to make sure the Head of Engineering wasn’t doing anything more stupid than he could help. He passed Blake’s desk on the way there, and saw Blake chatting amiably with the bespectacled man from the restaurant. Avon forced his eyes not to narrow as Blake put a hand on the other man’s arm, then he strode into Hunt’s office.

“In my opinion,” Avon told Hunt, after he’d delivered a brief summary of his latest work, “prototype thirteen will not be ready for testing with live specimens for at least another month. It would be most inadvisable to proceed sooner than that.”

“Unfortunately I agree,” Hunt said. “The speed of my department is appalling. I have tried to have words, implement other motivational schemes, et cetera, but they’re still _barely_ making their targets. The idea of being able to test a new prototype within a week of it being built is absolutely ludicrous!”

Avon let himself out of the office five minutes later, which was about all he could stand. Blake was back at his own desk now, and Avon drifted over to him. Blake must have slept a lot after Avon had left, because he looked almost back to normal, aside from the large, romantic sleeves that flowed out from the edges of his tunic. The piratical style looked good on him, and Avon found himself absurdly hoping that Blake would stick with the look, even after his arm had recovered.

“Hunt’s denying everything,” he told Blake, kneeling so that his presence here wouldn’t be immediately obvious to anyone who glanced along the rows of engineering desks. It brought his eye line down level with the edge of Blake’s broken arm.

“I’m not surprised,” Blake murmured. “I’m sure it’s _very_ embarrassing for them. How much longer is he saying we have?”

“I advised a month.”

“Which means two weeks,” Blake said. “All right. We can work with that. Thank you for letting me know.”

Avon’s eyes flicked from Blake’s face to his wrist, which was swamped by the end of his sleeve. “How’s your arm?”

“Better,” Blake said, “thanks to you, and to the massive amounts of bone-knitting drugs currently swilling around in my system.”

“Can you put weight on it, do you think?”

Blake frowned. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I was just wondering,” Avon said vaguely. He met Blake’s eyes, “Would you still like to have sex with me?”

Blake’s eyebrows rose, and he lowered his voice to an even quieter volume than the one he’d used to talk about the incriminating injury. “I’d _prefer_ to be in a _relationship_ with you.”

“Then I suppose you can promise me that I won’t see you out with other men on an almost daily basis?” Avon said.

Blake looked annoyed, and then embarrassed. “I wish I could. You have no idea how-”

Avon held up a hand to stop his excuses. “Assuming you can’t, sex is all that’s on the table. It is also all that ever will be on the table. You can take it or leave it.” He got to his feet again.

He’d decided, somewhere between his office and Hunt’s, that this third way was his best chance of staying sane. In fact, it was almost ideal. After all, he didn’t want to get emotionally involved – that was what would get him into trouble. If his body needed Blake, it could have him, as long as they both acknowledged that was all it was.

He rose to his feet and made to walk away, though he was fairly certain Blake was going to say yes. Sure enough, a hand fastened around his wrist before he’d gone too far.

“When?” Blake said, looking up at him.

 _Now_ , Avon thought desperately. Blake’s grip on his wrist had sent his blood thumping through his veins. _Now, in my office. Now, now-_

“Tonight,” he said levelly, and wrote his address down for Blake in the middle of a group of calculations about the speed of light travelling through various different substances. One of them was wrong, and Avon idly corrected it, and then went back and added his name above his address in case Blake forgot which address belonged to which man.

“I have to be somewhere at nine,” Blake said.

“Good,” Avon said, and tried not to notice the way his heart fell.

*

Blake arrived at about seven. Avon had wondered whether Blake would just walk into the building and then into Avon’s apartment, as he had that first day, but he rang the intercom like anyone else.

“ _Blake_.”

“All right. It’s open,” Avon told him, pressing the button that would unlock the main door into the building. And then he had to wait five minutes while Blake took the lift up to the fourth floor, and walked along the landing. Avon checked his hair in the mirror above his hall table, brushed it back into place, and then had to quickly put the brush down as Blake knocked.

Avon pressed the door-release button for him, and let Blake into his flat. They’d both had time to change after the end of the workday. Blake had switched his cream shirt and green tunic for a simple white shirt, with similarly flowing sleeves. It was very open at the neck and the vee of the neckline guided Avon’s eyes downwards to Blake’s tight, flared trousers.

Avon himself had opted for black. Since he wasn’t planning to talk to Blake or spend any time with him beyond what was strictly necessary, he’d decided to make things as easy as possible and was just wearing a dressing gown. Blake’s eyes made a similar journey down Avon’s front, down to his bare feet and then back up to his face.

“You look-” Blake began, but Avon held up a hand.

“I’m not interested.”

“Fine,” Blake said, so coldly that Avon found himself saying,

“So do you.”

The corner of Blake’s mouth twitched, and Avon grinned back, and Blake took a step closer to him and caught Avon’s face with the hand of his uninjured arm. Avon let himself be drawn closer to Blake, and opened his mouth under Blake’s as soon as they touched.

This time, Avon was able to keep slightly more control over himself than he had managed back in Blake’s apartment. He reached for the bottom of Blake’s shirt and drew it up Blake’s body. Blake obligingly broke the kiss long enough for Avon to pull his shirt off him and then he reached for Avon again (one arm still bound tightly in the splint), and drew him back in, this time with both hands carefully holding his face. Avon wrapped his arms around Blake’s back, and pulled him in closer. The skin on Blake’s back was soft and hairless, and he could still feel the raised lines where Blake had been scratched a few days before beneath his fingers. He probably had touched more interesting things before, but none seemed to come readily to mind.

Blake’s hands slid down his jaw-line, along the curve of his neck and into his dressing gown, over his shoulders. Avon felt himself shiver as Blake’s hands went lower and neatly pulled the front of the dressing gown open, returning to his shoulders only to push the whole garment off and onto the floor. The material settled with a heavy thump onto Avon’s wood panelling, and Avon felt Blake along the entire front of his naked body. Blake’s hands were gently exploring the curve of his back, and suddenly impatient Avon grabbed Blake’s unbroken wrist and moved the hand around to his front.

“ _This_ is what we’ve come to do,” he pointed out, closing Blake’s fingers around his cock.

“Anyone would think you were desperate, Avon,” Blake said, beginning to squeeze and drag in warm, tight strokes.

“Merely _efficient_ ,” Avon said, trying not to purr. He bit gently down on Blake’s shoulder, as he had imagined he would do on their first day, and Blake squirmed appreciatively against him.

“Why don’t we go somewhere with a bed?” Blake suggested huskily against his ear, and Avon pulled away. He didn’t want to stop touching Blake, but finding a bed would led to more and better ways of touching Blake.

“All right. This way.”

The bedroom was through a single door. Avon was a tidy person by nature, but he’d made an extra effort to remove personal possessions that might incriminate him because he’d known Blake would be in here. All that was out was a bottle of lubricant and a reading lamp.

“Rather single-minded,” Blake said, nodding towards the lube as he began stripping off his trousers. “No, no, I’m sorry,” he smiled, “ _efficient_.”

Avon sat down on his bed, something he’d done at least once every day since he’d moved here. Suddenly it felt exciting and erotic. He was sitting down on his bed so that he and Blake could have sex on it in a moment. Any moment now he would be having sex with Blake on his bed. With Blake. On his bed. Blake’s trousers were off and on the floor now next to his shoes, Blake’s underwear tight over an impressive bulge. As Avon watched, Blake hooked his thumbs into the waistband and pushed the too-tight boxers down to his knees and off.

“You were... expecting something else?” Avon asked, trying not to eye Blake’s erection with too much interest now it had been revealed. Absentmindedly he ran his tongue over his lips. _I wonder what he’ll taste like._ He realised he’d been caught looking when his eyes returned to Blake’s face, and he saw Blake was grinning.

“No,” Blake said, joining him on the bed. He stretched out over Avon, his skin deliciously soft over hard muscles and bones. He brought his hips down. Avon felt the damp kiss of Blake’s cock against his hip and thrust up into him helplessly, desperate to bring the two of them together. A few more minor adjustments of hips and hands, and Blake’s cock was rubbing against Avon’s while Blake pressed kisses around Avon’s lips, under his jaw and then back up over his chin, and Avon dug his fingernails into Blake’s arse and tried to bring him closer.

“What do you want?” Blake’s whispered around kisses. “What do you like? How can I make you feel good?”

 _Like this,_ Avon thought, reeling from the touch of Blake’s lips on his throat. _I want you_. _I like you. This feels good._

“Frottage,” Blake suggested hoarsely. His hips were still moving, and it was difficult to concentrate. Avon murmured agreement. “Or hands,” Blake continued. “Mouths, either way round. Penetration, either way round. What do you want, Avon? I like everything-”

“Even anonymous sex in restaurant bathrooms,” Avon said before he could stop himself.  

Blake made a face and began to pull away. “All right. If you’re going to be like that-”

“Like _myself_?” Avon said. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t realised that was a turn-off for you.”

“ _You_ asked me to come here,” Blake said accusingly. He was sitting up now, legs over the edge of the bed, and Avon sat up too, because to do otherwise would leave him passive and exposed. “ _You_ said, Avon, that you wanted sex and nothing more. I’m just trying to do what _you_ wanted.”

“You didn’t give me another choice,” Avon snarled.

Blake flinched as though he’d been slapped, then he stood. “You’re right. This isn’t going to work. It’s not fair. To either of us.”

He was going to leave, which was the very last thing that Avon wanted. Avon had already made the decision to put Blake over dignity, so he didn’t even really think before he got to his feet and pulled Blake gently back by the arm.

“In case you haven’t noticed, life isn’t fair. Especially not life under the Federation.”

Blake wore an expression Avon recognised from the mirror – interest concealed poorly under nonchalance. Although Blake had been about to walk out, and Avon thought he genuinely _would_ have walked out, he could clearly be persuaded to stay.

“Is that so?”

“So, we might as well sleep together,” Avon said, drawing Blake into his arms again. “And I won’t ask you about your personal life.”

Blake sighed, his mouth twisting ruefully. “That won’t really make things better, though, will it?”

“It won’t make things worse, either,” Avon told him. He slid his hands down over, and around Blake’s arse, and then back up to his waist. “And if stasis isn’t a good enough reason for you, you might try the fact that I’ll be very angry if you go. And very pleased if you stay.”

“I admit I’m not _un_ convinced,” Blake said, and let Avon kiss him. A hand came up and smoothed Avon’s hair away from his face, with unwise tenderness. “Do you want to answer my question now?”

 _What question?_ Avon wondered briefly. Surely the discussions of fairness and making things better had been rhetorical. Then he remembered Blake asking how he could best make Avon happy. Or more accurately, how Avon would best like to be fucked before Blake left at nine o’clock to have sex with someone else.

Avon’s body had a few ideas about what it wanted, but they weren’t practical. He and Blake were going to have simple, meaningless sex.  The more anonymous it could be, the better. That meant that it would be a bad idea to let Blake suck him off, even if he was desperate for it, because he would be able to see _Blake_ doing it.  And he would definitely be able to see Blake and how sex was affecting him if Avon gave in to temptation and sucked Blake’s cock, or asked to fuck him. Frottage was obviously too personal and made it too easy to talk, they’d already proved that – and fingering and other forms of shared masturbation were going to have similar problems.

Fortunately the final choice, which involved Avon hiding his face in a pillow while Blake pounded into his arse, was not at all unattractive.

He pulled away from the embrace, and returned to the bed. The sheets were still in disarray from their earlier attempt and Avon smoothed them out before he lay down on his stomach. He opened his legs slightly to give Blake the idea if he hadn’t got it already, and then glanced back up at him through lowered lashes.

“Fuck me.”

“Well... if that’s what you want,” Blake said, with another poor show of nonchalance, “who am I to disoblige you?”

He kept his eyes on Avon as he walked over to the lubricant Avon had left out. Avon twitched as he saw Blake remove his watch and set it down on the bedside table, pick up the bottle of lubricant and turn it over in his hands. He saw Blake notice that twitch and decided it would be a better idea to turn his head away now.

He felt, rather than saw, Blake sit down on the bed next to him, and then there came the light touch of Blake’s lips at the curve of his back. There was another kiss lower down, and then another, all of which made Avon glad Blake couldn’t see his expression. It was probably pathetically yearning and lost, already. Why couldn’t Blake just get on with it? They weren’t lovers who had all of eternity – they were fucking to a schedule, so Blake could leave on time for his second appointment.  

He almost didn’t notice Blake’s hands (dry and warm, since he hadn’t used the lubricant yet) pressing his buttocks apart, but he certainly felt the damp caress of Blake’s tongue on his anus.

“What the-?” Avon protested, and tried to scramble away, even as he felt his insides flooding with warmth. “ _Blake_ -”

“I thought that would get your attention,” Blake said with amusement.

“Are you _confused_ -?” Avon demanded, and then he had to break off because Blake was tonguing him again. Avon had been intending to keep his reaction hidden whatever Blake did to him, but Blake’s attack was so unexpected and overwhelming that he wasn’t able to do anything about the whimpering, gasping sounds escaping from his throat. He clenched his hands in the bed sheets, and longed for it to be over or for Blake to promise it would never end.

“Am I confused?” Blake prompted when he drew away for the second time.

“...About which part of you I wanted inside me?” Avon said breathlessly. He twisted his head to one side, intending to glare at Blake, and found that the other man had been touching himself while he’d been licking Avon. For some reason that brought Avon up short. Blake had enjoyed doing that to him – the thought was incredibly erotic.

“I used my initiative,” Blake told him, his hand still lazily clenched around his own cock. He started to laugh to himself, “And my tongue.”

Avon thought he might get a brief respite while Blake recovered from an attack of his own cleverness, and then Blake’s lubricated finger pushed into him. Strangely, this _did_ feel almost relaxing after the earlier onslaught, and Avon felt his breathing steady. His skin hummed with heat, and Blake pushed a second finger into him.

“Better?” Blake asked, and Avon gave an uncaring murmur to indicate that it was. Blake’s fingers curled and probed, and he pressed another kiss to Avon’s spine, his other hand stroking Avon’s side like he was a frightened animal.  

Avon was breathing heavily by this point, but any sounds he was making were definitely concealed by the pillow. Then Blake’s third finger was joined again by his tongue, which gently fluttered around the edge of Blake’s knuckles. Avon’s skin was stretched tightly around Blake’s fingers and so it was even more sensitive now that it had been before. He whined loudly as further pleasure ripped through him, and attempted to roll onto his back to get away from it. Blake pulled away to give him room, and drew his fingers out in a long damp, slide.

Avon stared up at his ceiling, his chest heaving, and finally forced himself to look at Blake, who was crouched between his legs and smiling.

“ _Better_ ,” Blake said, as though in answer to his earlier question. “I couldn’t see you before.”

Avon’s eyes flicked from Blake’s hands, which were dispensing a large amount of lubricant from one to the other. He looked down to Blake’s cock, and then back to his face again. Blake smiled at him.

“You did that on purpose,” Avon said accusingly.

“Perhaps,” Blake agreed. “But I also enjoyed it.” He ran a careful hand down his own cock, trying to coat it with lubricant without bringing himself any closer to the edge. Avon considered rolling over again now Blake was distracted – but Blake was distracted because he was stroking his erection with the intention of fucking Avon with it in the immediate future. It was difficult to look away from that sort of thing. Again Blake caught him watching, and his gaze turned predatory and the movement on his cock became less clinical, and more obviously sexual. One of Avon’s hands drifted to his own erection, and he saw Blake notice that too and forced it back to the bed.

“Legs up,” Blake said breathily and, rather than resist any longer, Avon obliged him by drawing his knees apart and up towards his chest. Blake reached above him for a pillow, leaning down to kiss Avon’s lips as he did so, and then moved back down to push the pillow under Avon’s arse.

“Get on with it,” Avon snapped, just as Blake finally settled over him, the wet head of his cock butting against Avon’s arse and his arms enclosing Avon’s shoulders.

“Now?” Blake asked. His face was very close, and Avon could see clearly the lust covering the impatience and a slight anxiety that Avon really wasn’t enjoying this. All of it was attractive and dangerous and exciting. Avon shut his eyes to block it out.

“If you know what’s good for you,” he told the man above him, and then he let his head fall back as Blake entered him.

Avon hadn’t had sex for a while. That was probably why it felt so wonderful. It wasn’t that it was Blake; it was that it was sex. He clenched his hands more tightly in the sheets.

Blake pulled back slightly and pushed in deeper. This time Avon heard a high gasping sound escape from his own throat. It was repeated when Blake thrust deeper, and again and again until he was finally in all the way, and his balls were pressed up against Avon’s arse.

Then incredibly he stopped, and held himself there. Avon could feel the trembling in Blake’s muscles rippling across his own body. His cock twitched against Blake’s stomach.

“All right?” Blake asked.

“Yes,” Avon told him. He glared at Blake, daring him to find this next confidence amusing. “I’m just very loud during sex.”

“Ah. I hadn’t noticed,” Blake said, keeping his face completely straight, except for a telltale twitch at the corner of his mouth.

He rocked his hips slightly, and Avon gaped wordlessly, and clutched at him. Blake repeated the motion, apparently pleased with its effect, and then pulled out only to push in again. A period of slow, languid thrusting followed until Avon had managed to acclimatise himself to that sensation, and then Blake doubled his pace. That broke the fragile hold Avon had on his vocal chords. Each thrust of Blake’s hips brought fourth another whimper.  

“And if I _had_ noticed,” Blake told him, breathless and amused, “I think I’d probably like it.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Avon retorted. Rather than rely on Blake’s ability to obey orders, he cupped his hands around the back of Blake’s head and dragged him into a kiss. Blake’s hips continued to move as he thrust his tongue past Avon’s teeth. Avon gripped him more tightly to keep his head where it was as Blake’s rhythm picked up again, but eventually his fingers felt too weak and he was forced to let go. Released, Blake was able to draw back fully, and slam into him harder than ever.

 _I suppose all that practice has been good for his stamina,_ Avon thought headily, and he would have been angry except Blake was looking at him desperately like he was the only person in the world who mattered. It was that look, more even than the friction on Avon’s cock or the pounding against his prostate, that trigged Avon’s orgasm. Briefly it seemed absurd that he had ever wanted to be fucked on his stomach. He would have missed everything that was important about this experience.

Blake must have felt the orgasm rippling through Avon’s body because he jerked, and gave a gasp of his own. Then he pulled back and thrust deeply again, and again, as Avon whimpered at the continuing assault on his highly sensitive body. At last, when Avon thought he was surely going to sustain some sort of permanent damage, Blake came and collapsed, panting, on top of him.

Forgetting himself and the promises he’d made to his better judgement, Avon leaned up and kissed Blake while he was too shagged-out to respond. Then gradually Blake regained control of himself and kissed Avon back. Avon’s hands moved up to caress Blake’s hair again. It was soft and damp with sweat. For an absurd moment, Avon wanted to tell Blake something ridiculous like that he was in love with him, but fortunately the moment passed.

With a brief parting kiss, Blake pulled out and slid off Avon onto the mattress. “That was good,” he said, and kissed Avon’s elbow.

“You’re welcome,” Avon told him, and Blake grinned.

“You don’t think I had anything to do with it?”

“I assumed you were offering me a compliment,” Avon said. “I didn’t realise you were just congratulating yourself. Now I do,” he clapped his hands three times, “well done, Blake. Excellent performance.”

Blake’s eyes creased with amusement, and he leaned up on an elbow to kiss Avon again. “I was under the impression that you enjoyed it.”

“The problem with having a reputation for sarcasm, is that it’s difficult to be taken seriously,” Avon said. “Rest assured that I did enjoy it, and you can do it again to me whenever you like.”

“A promise I will hold you to,” Blake said. “What are you doing tomorrow evening?”

“Letting you fuck my brains out, I expect,” Avon told him. “Why do you ask?”  

“Insecurity,” Blake said with a smile. He pressed another kiss to Avon’s temple, and then reached over Avon’s body to collect his watch from the bedside table. He made a face as he inspected the digital display. “I should go.”

“Do you want a shower?” Avon asked, keeping his tone casual and business-like as Blake stood and began collecting his clothes.

“Unfortunately, there’s not really any time,” Blake said. “You kept me occupied longer than I’d anticipated.” He grinned roguishly at Avon, who was still sitting on the bed, the sheets now strategically arranged over himself because Blake was getting dressed. He wasn’t going to leave himself exposed while Blake was rapidly disguising the fact that this had ever happen.  

“The problem is that you smell of sex,” Avon told him.

Blake looked up from tying his shoelaces. “That’s not a problem,” he said with another smile.

 _Not for you, but it probably will be for the next man,_ Avon thought sourly. _Unless that’s part of the attraction for the next man. Perhaps he likes to share._

He let Blake kiss him and stride out the door, with a quick “See you tomorrow.” Very quick. In fact, Blake was still pulling his shirt on over his head as the door slid closed behind him.

So _anxious to leave,_ Avon thought to himself, with an attempt at wryness.

Unlike Blake, he did take a shower. The water was hot and he turned it onto the highest pressure to make sure it got as much of Blake off him as possible. When he eventually stepped out of the cubical, he felt exhausted and like he’d been beaten, but he felt clean.

It was still early in the evening, so there was still time to get in a few hours of work. He dressed again, fully, in a clean set of clothes that Blake had never stroked him through, and sat down at his desk. He wrote several new tests and suggested a fundamental change to the way light was fed through the teleport prototype.

When he finally returned to bed at midnight, he realised he’d forgotten to change the sheets. The smell of Blake and his own semen surrounded him, making Avon feel like he was choking. At least, that was presumably why his throat tightened and his eyes prickled – anything else would have been ludicrous.

Too tired and irritable to do the job properly, Avon stripped the bed quickly, left the old sheets in a pile on the floor and re-made the bed. He lay down in the crisp new sheets, and closed his eyes, but the smell of Blake seemed to still linger distractingly. Avon got up again, put the old sheets in to washing machine and set it going. Then he took another shower. Most of the hot water had already been used by the washing machine. That was why it was another very cold shower.

*

Blake arrived at Avon’s flat about the same time the next day. Avon was wearing the same dressing gown as before, but this time he didn’t bother to greet Blake at the door. Blake knew where he lived and where his flat was – they didn’t need to stand on ceremony. And he certainly didn’t owe Blake unnatural courtesy.

He was working at his desk when Blake arrived, looking handsome in blue. Without a word, Avon got to his feet and walked to the bedroom. Behind him, he could hear the sounds of Blake dropping his own clothes to the floor and toeing off his boots. By the time Avon had reached the bed and had turned around to look at him again, Blake was naked, besides for one sock endearingly left on. He hastened to remove it as Avon smirked and let his robe fall to the ground.

If Blake noticed the clean sheets, he didn’t say anything. He just tumbled Avon into the bed, and they spent a warm and frantic interval remembering what it was like to touch each other. Avon was already sure that he would never get used to it. Each touch of Blake’s mouth or his hands made Avon lose more of himself. Strangely, while it was happening, it felt like it was worth it.

“I’ve been thinking about this all day,” Blake told him as he moved down Avon’s body.           

“Not very flattering,” Avon said, and Blake looked up in bemusement from where he’d been contemplating Avon’s erection from very close quarters. “It means you were thinking about my anatomy, while you were supposed to be thinking about my suggestions to improve the teleport prototype,” Avon explained.

“Ah,” Blake said. “I do apologise. I meant to say I’d been thinking about fucking you at several _points_ during the day. Most of the time I was doing what I’m paid to do, and thinking about your excellent theories on to how to dematerialise matter. Incidentally,” he said, moving back up to eye level, “the most recent innovation doesn’t work, I’m afraid.”

“In what way?” Avon asked.

“Well, for a _start_ ,” Blake said, sounding for all the world like he was going to launch into a discussion about work that would eat into however long they had together today. It was probably a joke, under the circumstances, and Avon grinned and shoved him back down the bed.

“We can talk about it later,” he said. Blake nodded with amusement, and dropped down to take Avon’s cock deep into his mouth.

Blake seemed to have a more-than-usual interest in using his tongue as part of a sexual encounter, Avon thought headily, as he was enveloped in warmth and wetness, and Blake began tonguing the vein under Avon’s shaft. Then again he was very good at it. Presumably he was clever enough to play to his strengths.

Avon sucked in air through his teeth, and tried not to choke Blake by thrusting eagerly into his mouth. Fortunately Blake was pressing down on his hip with one hand, which was both functional and erotic. Rather than being the only one allowing himself to be manhandled, Avon closed his fingers in Blake’s hair and tugged him closer. Blake’s laughed around the cock in his mouth, sending shivers through Avon’s nervous system. At some point he began bobbing his head faster, and at some point he pressed a slick finger into Avon’s arse and then another, and at some point Avon realised he must have been gasping Blake’s name for what must have been a good three minutes.

It was almost a relief to come, and spiral down from that euphoria. Even then he could feel his muscles contracting around Blake’s fingers for a few moments afterwards until Blake pulled his hand gently back and out.

Blake returned to the head of the bed, looking smug and self-satisfied. It was a look Avon had already seen on him numerous times and usually it was only mildly attractive, but the only reason for it now was that Blake had given him a shattering orgasm. That made the expression irresistible.

He let Blake kiss him, tasting his own semen in the other man’s mouth, and reached down for Blake’s cock. This produced a satisfying response. Blake bucked into him, his mouth dropping open in gasp. Avon grinned at that, and Blake kissed him again, presumably to stop him looking so pleased.

“So - what do you want to do with this?” Avon asked, rubbing his thumb idly over the head of Blake’s erection. There was another satisfying jerk from the man it belonged to, and Blake leant in to bite the lobe of Avon’s ear in retaliation.

“Yesterday,” Blake reminded him, “you told me I could fuck your brains out again today. I assume that offer is still open.”

“Well, you can fuck me,” Avon said, keeping his voice steady and conversational. “What the quality and effect are is yet to be determined.”

He’d expected it to be less important than what they’d done together the day before. His body had had time to get used to sex and sex with Blake. He’d even come himself within the past thirty minutes. For some reason, Avon therefore expected to be able to lie there under Blake and view him with detachment as he sweated and heaved. Instead, he found himself more able to concentrate on being the centre of Blake’s undivided attention. And how wonderful that was.

Blake seemed to understand (presumably from long experience with other men) that Avon’s over sensitive body would appreciate a slower pace than that of the day before. So Avon found himself being fucked with slow, deep strokes while Blake looked down at him, his eyes bright with lust and affection. He had to kiss Blake to make it stop, and then because it would have been difficult to stop kissing Blake.

After a while, the repeated, slow stabs against Avon’s prostate began to firm up his cock again. Blake must have felt it, or noticed the shift in Avon’s breathing or the flicker of his eyelashes, because he reached down and closed one hand around the erection tapping against Avon’s stomach. He began stroking in time to the thrust of his hips, and Avon tried to stay sane.

Ridiculously, Avon actually came first, although Blake only lasted for one more thrust before the clenching of Avon’s muscles sent him over the edge too. His fingernails dug into Avon’s arms in a way that would have been painful if Avon hadn’t still been floating in a post-orgasm high.

Blake lay on top of him for a moment longer, kissed him weakly, and rolled away into a heap against the wall.

When Avon’s heartbeat had returned to its usual speed, he realised that Blake had fallen asleep. As he watched, Blake even began to snore. It wasn’t an attractive sound in any way. If he’d had to live with it for any length of time, Avon would undoubtedly have been forced to send Blake for corrective surgery. And so it was incredibly unfair that Avon’s heart gave an odd, painful twitch in response to the noise.

It was the implied trust that was the problem. Blake had fallen asleep, as though he had the right to do so here, and quickly, easily, as though he had no doubts that anything bad would happen to him as a result of it.

For a moment Avon considered letting him sleep. Some other man would be out there, wondering where Blake was, but that was _Blake’s_ problem. If he’d really cared he would have stayed awake. Or reminded Avon that he had to leave, or set an alarm on his watch. Clearly he didn’t care. Or he did care – and wanted to stay.

 _I could have him for the night,_ Avon thought with sudden, shocking clarity.

_But then what?_

It was clear that Blake _could do_ with a rest. His arm was out of its splint now, so he must have finished healing, but re-growing a bone that fast took a phenomenal amount of energy. He should ideally sleep for at least ten hours every night this week, and assuming he woke at seven or earlier to get to work, he couldn’t really afford to go to sleep any later than this. He was obviously the sort of person who didn’t take care of themselves – too busy ensuring that innocent animals weren’t headed for the slaughter, and that as many people fell in love with him as possible.

Avon had been reaching out to stroke Blake’s cheekbone as this thought presented itself to him. He paused, and turned the gesture into a shake of Blake’s shoulder, gently at first and then more vigorously.

“Blake. Wake up. It’s nine o’clock. Time to go.”

Blake swallowed the snore, as though it had never happened. He scrunched his eyes together, and then blinked several times. “What is it?”

“Wake up,” Avon repeated.

“Done,” Blake said. He shut his eyes again lazily, as though to disprove this. “And for my next trick?”

“It’s nine o’clock,” Avon said, moving Blake’s watch from the bedside table onto Blake’s chest. It must have been cold, because Blake grunted and picked it up quickly. He squinted at the digital display, and then dropped the watch back onto the sheets.

“I don’t actually have to go anywhere today.”

“Interesting, but irrelevant,” Avon said. “I’d still prefer it if you left.”

Blake opened one eye to look at him. “Is this because I snore?” They both knew it wasn’t, and even Blake must have realised he was pushing his luck by suggesting it. He sat up, and Avon stood up to get away from him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Avon said as he pulled his dressing gown back on. Once Blake had gone, he stripped the bed again and took another shower.

*

They had sex again at Avon’s flat on Thursday, and would have done on Friday, except that Blake rang at six thirty and said that he had to be somewhere else suddenly. Avon told him this was perfectly fine, he was under no obligation to do anything, and cut the comm. connection. He had never given Blake his number, which proved that Blake could have called the weekend before but had chosen not to. It was difficult not to take this personally, despite the broken arm that had apparently been involved.

Avon spent Saturday pretending not to care about what Blake was doing with himself and trying to convince his body it didn’t actually need- _sex_ on a daily basis. This was exhausting and distracting, and so it was it was a relief when Blake showed up at his door on Sunday afternoon. They didn’t have an official arrangement regarding weekends, but Avon found himself surprisingly willing to improvise on this point.    

By the time he’d finished sucking Blake’s cock, it was still only four o’clock. The light in the corridors outside was still set at maximum brightness, and Blake seemed in no hurry to leave.  He wasn’t asleep this time, just lying drowsily against Avon with an arm draped possessively over Avon’s chest. It was warm and pleasant. The taste of Blake still lingered in Avon’s mouth.   

“I don’t suppose you fancy a walk,” Blake said against Avon’s ear.

Avon made a face and twisted his head towards the other man to make sure Blake got the full effect. “A _what_?”

“A walk,” Blake said. “You put one foot in front of the other, and then sort of move forwards towards a destination. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it. It’s quite popular.”

“I have heard of it,” Avon said. His eyes were narrowed to show he wasn’t amused at this weak joke, which had been delivered almost entirely deadpan until Blake had cracked at the end of the final sentence.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Blake said, grinning.

“I’m just not sure why you suggested it.”

“Because I thought it might be _nice_ ,” Blake said, with feigned exasperation.

“Nice?” Avon said. “I see.” He could in fact picture it rather clearly. Perhaps they would walk through a park together. Blake would make a few more jokes of a similar quality to those he’d just employed, and they could talk about work and perhaps life, and enjoy being in each others’ company.

“And after this _walk_?” Avon asked.

“Well, we’d probably get somewhere,” Blake said. “The vizzies perhaps.”

“And after that?” Avon asked, imagining it.

“I don’t know,” Blake said. “Dinner?”

“So what you’re suggesting is a walk, a darkened room, and then another shared meal,” Avon said. “That sounds like a date, Blake.”

“Ah,” Blake said. He withdrew his arm from around Avon’s chest and pressed the edge of his hand against his mouth. “And we’re not dating, are we? All right. Well, drop the walk and the vizzies.”

“Leaving dinner,” Avon said, and Blake shrugged, smiling. “That _still_ sounds like a date to me,” Avon told him, with a flash of his teeth. “And, as you correctly observed, we are not dating.”

To emphasise this point he got out of bed and pulled on the dressing gown. Blake continued to lie where he was, his head propped on his hand and his cock resting temptingly against his thigh.

“You’re right. Now I think about it, it does sound almost exactly like the first time we went out.”

“That was not a date,” Avon said instinctively.

“Then why not come out with me again?”

“Because I can’t trust you to go to the bathroom on your own.”

Blake grimaced, and then he sighed. “Well, what _are_ you going to do with the rest of the day?”

“I haven’t really thought about it,” Avon said, leaning back against the wall and trying not to let his eyes flick to the lower half of Blake’s body too often. “I might do some work. There are some things I need to check before Monday.”

“Sensible,” Blake said.

“That’s _not_ a bad thing to be,” Avon said, more defensively than he would have liked.

Blake inclined his head. “I should probably do the same, but I thought I would prefer to spend time with you.” An idea clearly struck him, as his eyebrows raised one after the other and he turned to Avon. “You don’t have a spare computer, do you?”

“I have a cupboard entirely filled with spare computers,” Avon said. “Why do you ask? They’re not going to be useful to you at the vizzies.”

“No, but I thought I might be sensible instead,” Blake said, sitting up. He pushed himself off the bed and walked over to the wall Avon was leaning against.

“Really,” Avon said.

“Mm,” Blake said. “You’re a good influence on me, Avon. I’d rather not leave and slip into bad habits unsupervised. It seems counterproductive.” He rested his arms either side of Avon’s shoulders and leant in. Avon turned his head away to laugh, and then rolled it back to look at Blake again.

“Do you mind if I stay here where you can keep an eye on me?” Blake asked.

“While you _work_?” Avon asked, eyebrow raised.

Blake grinned. “While I work, yes.”

“I don’t mind,” Avon told him, letting Blake kiss him gently. “As long as you put your trousers back on and keep quiet.” They both glanced downwards and then back up. Blake raised his eyebrows.

“The trousers are an important factor?”

“The trousers are a very important factor,” Avon agreed, and pushed Blake out of the way, aware that he was grinning.

He pulled open one of the concealed cupboards as Blake began grumbling and pulling on his clothes. The cupboard was, as he’d told Blake, stacked with various different models of computer, some of which Avon had built himself and some of which he’d merely modified from standard-issue devices. Based on what he knew of Blake’s work, it seemed unlikely that Blake would need a computer that did anything fancy. He withdrew a portable computer he’d used on the commute to his previous job and put it down on the bedside table, next to Blake’s watch.

“You can use this. I’ll be out in a moment.”

He locked the bathroom door behind him. As pleasant as it might be to have Blake join him in the shower, right now all he wanted was to clean up and get dressed in something clean and well pressed. If Blake was going to be here for a while, it would be nice to not to have to feel awkward about his own appearance.

He turned the shower off, towelled himself dry and returned to the bedroom, which was now empty.

Perhaps Blake had left after all, Avon thought, but even as he thought this he realised he could hear the comforting sound of computer keys tapping from the other room. He fought down the urge to physically check that Blake was the originator of the sounds and selected a dark-grey shirt and trousers from his wardrobe, as well as thin socks and slightly heeled boots.

Blake glanced up as Avon returned to the living room, and the corner of his mouth twitched as he looked back down at his screen again. Rather charmingly he appeared to have made two cups of tea during Avon’s shower. Since he hadn’t asked for tea, Avon didn’t say thank you, but he did drink it idly as he worked. After another hour, Blake pulled Avon’s feet up onto his lap and removed Avon’s boots for him without taking his eyes off his own screen. Avon rolled his eyes, but let it happen.

When he ran out of his own work, he began writing tests for the work Blake was about to do. The idea being that if Blake could satisfy the tests with what he was building then it would be worth building. Their computers were networked together, so it was easy to push the tests through to Blake’s laptop.

Blake glanced up at him when the first one appeared at the top of his screen, grinned, and began to push his work back across for Avon to check it. It was oddly pleasant, even though Avon generally preferred to work alone.

After a few hours Blake went out in the corridor to make a phone call. Avon pointedly did not ask what it was about, though he could see Blake looking at him every so often, as though daring him to do so. Twenty minutes later several boxes of food arrived. Blake presented the Delta who’d brought them with a ludicrous tip, and Avon tried not to feel relieved that it was only a food-delivery call that had taken Blake away earlier.

Blake seemed content to continue to work silently while eating, but he was using Avon’s computer and so he found his hand slapped away the first time he reached for the keys with greasy fingers. He shot Avon an adorable, hurt expression, licked his fingers and pushed the computer away. Avon let him talk and swallow and lick his fingers for a further minute, and then it was all suddenly too much, and he was forced to tug Blake back into the bedroom. Work and food both equally forgotten, he sucked each of Blake’s fingers in turn until Blake told him breathlessly to stop being such a tease and get to work lower down, if he was going to.

This time it was Avon who fell asleep in the post-coital languor.

He woke several hours later to an empty bed. Blake must have shown himself out, which was good, really. That was what Avon wanted. He lay there reminding himself of this for a while, and then he noticed the familiar, telltale clicking of computer keys coming from the other room.

The dressing gown he’d worn earlier seemed to have vanished, so Avon hunted around in the dark for his pyjama drawer. He drew it open and located a pair of loose trousers, which he pulled on. The idea of walking around even his own flat naked and only half awake was not appealing. Presumably it _was_ Blake in the next room, but if it wasn’t and Avon was in the process of being robbed he’d prefer to be clothed when he faced them.

It was Blake. He was sitting in the dark, lit only by the light of the computer, which caught him at unflattering angles – the bottom of his chin, the edge of his nose and the areas under his eyes. He was, Avon saw, wearing the missing dressing gown from earlier.  It was almost certainly too small for him, and gaped open across his smooth chest.

Avon smiled and watched him for a while, arms folded across his chest. Then he said, “What are you working on?”

Blake’s chin came up sharply, eyes wide, and then he crumpled back in relief as he saw it was Avon. His hand clutched against his chest where his heart was undoubtedly hammering against his ribcage. Clearly he had not known he was being watched. Avon grinned in amusement as Blake let out a long, slow breath.

“Nothing,” he said. Avon’s face must have told him that this was an unsatisfactory response because he added, “I thought I might have worked out what we were doing wrong with the dematerialisation circuits.”

If he had done it, this would be an incredibly important breakthrough. It wasn’t completely impossible that he’d made it at two in the morning in the dark, but Avon kept a healthy amount of scepticism in his voice as he said,

“And did you?”

The corners of Blake’s mouth twitched. “No.”

“Well, you might as well come back to bed then,” Avon said, turning back towards the bedroom.

“You... don’t mind if I stay?” Blake asked, and Avon turned back to look at him.

“Well now, you haven’t really given me a choice. Either you stay, or you’ll be arrested for breaking curfew. Or beaten up by gangs of marauding Deltas. Neither alternative seems viable if I want to get any use out of you in the future.”

“They’d have to catch me first,” Blake pointed out, but he closed the computer and followed Avon back into the bedroom.

It was strange but not unpleasant to settle into bed with Blake with the intention of sleeping, rather than having sex. Avon drifted off quite quickly, despite the additional warmth of Blake’s body, and the nagging bit of Avon’s brain that wanted to go back into the living room and check that Blake had been working on what he’d said he was working on.

After all, Avon told himself sleepily, why possible reason could Blake have to lie about _that_?

 


	4. Chapter 4

“Avon,” Blake said in the morning.

“Mm?” Avon said, without opening his eyes.

“I need to go.”

“Mm,” Avon said.

“I need to go and all my clothes are at my house,” Blake said with a laugh.

“At least some of them are on my floor,” Avon said, impressed that he’d managed a whole sentence before his first cup of coffee.

“You’re going to have to move,” Blake said, prodding at Avon’s arm, which was apparently slung across him. Avon withdrew it hastily, but obviously it was the sort of reaction that could happen to anyone while asleep. It didn’t mean anything.

“More than that,” Blake prompted.

Avon cracked an eye open, and found that Blake was crushed up against the wall of the alcove where Avon’s bed was housed. The only escape route must be behind Avon.

He closed the eye again. “Use your initiative.”

The bed shook as Blake stood up, and then again as he stepped heavily onto Avon’s other side and finally onto the floor.

“I’ll see you at work in an hour,” Blake said with amusement, and pressed a kiss to Avon’s shoulder. Avon smiled into his pillow where nobody could see. The door banged shut behind Blake, and ten minutes later the alarm clock went off to signal that Avon should probably drag himself out of bed too. He considered changing the sheets, but decided that since Blake would probably be back in about ten hours it was something of a wasted effort.

*

Blake showed up at his office at around midday, just after Avon had submitted another report to the engineering department. “Lunch?”

“We’re not dating,” Avon reminded him.

“I know we’re not dating,” Blake said. “I didn’t realise that meant you didn’t need to eat.”

“I do eat. Just not with you.”

“So what happened last night?”

Avon hesitated. Last night had probably been a mistake on numerous fronts, but not a mistake he _couldn’t_ recover from. “Last night...”

“-wasn’t too bad, was it?” Blake finished for him before Avon could think of something convincing to fill that gap. Avon scowled, but got to his feet rather than wait for Blake to leave, which he undoubtedly wouldn’t do. “This won’t be bad either,” Blake assured him. “It’s just lunch in the canteen with some of my friends.”

“And how many of your _friends_ have you slept with, would you say?”

“ _None_ of them,” Blake said, and pressed the door release button. Then he smiled his ‘trying not to laugh at his own jokes’ smile. “That is, none of them, _except_ for you.”

“Are we really _friends,_ Blake?”

Avon had pitched his retort like a rhetorical question, because clearly that wasn’t the nature of their relationship, but Blake made a face and said,

“I certainly _hope_ so.”

It was quite disarming. Mart Ensigm had not been entirely correct when he’d posited that Avon was not a man who had friends. Avon was not a man who had _many_ friends, and most of the ones he did have wanted him to do favours for them at some point, or owed him favours. Blake seemed just to be stating that they liked each other. He had stated this before, but he’d been trying to sleep with Avon at the time. Avon had almost believed him then, but now he thought Blake might well meant it. It made him want to do something for Blake – which was probably why he didn’t turn away immediately when he saw the young man with the long hair and the glasses sitting at the canteen table Blake indicated.

Avon turned back to Blake, eyebrows raised, and indicated the man in question. “Do you want to revise your earlier estimate?”

“No _,”_ Blake said, and steered Avon into one of the spare seats.  

Lunch was awkward, but not irredeemably so. All of Blake’s friends seemed to be from the engineering department, apart from one woman who worked in finance and the man sitting next to Avon who seemed to be a janitor. Reeve, the man from the restaurant, had clearly been prepped by Blake in advance, and apologised profusely for ruining Avon’s dinner the week before. He’d been working in the testing lab, and had overheard what he’d overheard, and had to come and talk to Blake about the - _you know what._

Although he’d accepted it from Blake, Avon would probably have refused this pathetic apology, despite Blake’s hand on his knee, but he wasn’t given the chance. The information that he had once been out on a date with Blake prompted a rush of inquiries into their supposed relationship.

“We’ve never actually been introduced to one of his conquests,” one of the engineers (Simmons) told Avon.

“And you wonder why not,” Blake said, with a slightly fixed smile.

“We hear about them all the time,” the janitor next to Avon added.

“That’s enough, thank you,” Blake said.

“But you’re the first to have actually been produced for inspection,” Simmons finished.

“ _Enough_ ,” Blake said.

“I’m conveniently located,” Avon explained. “I assume that has something to do with it. Blake needed only to drag me from the next corridor. The others are probably scattered around the Dome, and are only here on weekends.” He kept his voice light and mocking, so they wouldn’t think this mattered to him. Because it didn’t matter to him. Since he and Blake weren’t dating, and they were both free to do what they wanted.

“Didn’t you date someone from finance last year?” the finance woman asked Blake, who said,

“Can we discuss something else? _Leff_ ,” he pointed a finger at one of the engineers, presumably for Avon’s benefit, “you’re not still planning on switching the hard-light drive in thirteen for a regular modulator, are you?” 

This prompted a wave of criticism and discussion from the other engineers, directed at the unfortunate Leff, and protests from those who were not interested in talking about engineering at lunch, directed at Blake. Avon found himself caught up in the modulator discussion, and almost didn’t notice when the conversation moved onto who was stealing all the sticky notes from engineering, whether the Administration was right to ship convicts out to penal planets, and what should be done about the terrible communicator lines in the office.  

When Blake appeared at Avon’s office the next day with the same lunchtime request, Avon accepted because he had nothing else particular to do. By the end of the week the novelty of his presence had ceased to be a topic of conversation, although Gikae the finance woman did ask Avon whether Blake lived up to his reputation.

“If you mean his reputation as an infuriating wastrel who won’t take no for an answer, then yes, he does,” Avon said, and grinned at Blake over the table.

*

As Blake had predicted, they live-tested prototype thirteen almost two weeks to the day after Avon’s meeting with Hunt.

Due, Avon knew, in no small part to his own arrival at the project, the prototype had advanced significantly since its twelfth incarnation. Rather than the Movable Object (the thing they were trying to teleport) immediately disintegrating in the primary station, or the machine exploding, they had at last reached the point where on perhaps five per cent of tests the item _did_ disappear in the primary station and reappear in the secondary one.

The first time this had happened the engineers had thrown an impromptu party. Blake, it transpired and to nobody’s surprise, had a large bottle of soma in his desk drawer for just such an occasion. He didn’t seem to actually be that pleased, though. Avon had vaguely expected that they might have some sort of triumphant drunken, victory sex in his office while the others partied, but Blake wasn’t in the mood. Avon could see it in the way Blake smiled and laughed, even as he clapped people on the back and shouted abuse at the other engineers.

“What’s wrong?” Avon had asked.

“Nothing,” Blake had said unconvincingly. Avon had rolled his eyes and turned away and Blake had caught him by the elbow and tugged him in.

“It’s just - _what happens next?”_   he’d murmured against Avon’s ear. “What happens when we finish it?”

He’d drawn back, and Avon had raised an eyebrow. What would happen _if_ they finished it (and they were nowhere near finished –they had merely had one successful test) was that, after months of further testing, he and Blake and the rest of the project staff would be moved onto another project. They would work on something else. Perhaps not together, but Avon wanted to move into banking within a year and Blake didn’t, so they were going to have to separate at some point anyway. Blake knew that. So it wasn’t what Blake was asking now.

“Think about it,” Blake had murmured against his ear.

“Very mysterious. Why not just tell me?”

“I have more faith in you than that,” Blake had said, and he’d let himself be pulled over into a drinking competition, which he’d then won.

As it turned out, what happened next was that they’d put exactly the same object into exactly the same teleport prototype and nothing had happened. Then they’d put different objects in and nothing had continued to happen, until Blake’s friend Simmons had tried an orange, which promptly exploded.

Avon had adjusted the settings minutely on several occasions, and they had now reached a plateau of around five per cent successful transference. Nothing had exploded for some time. Avon considered this a job very well done, as did the Project board. After a Blake-free weekend (no explanation, of course, but then he hadn’t asked for one), Avon arrived at work on Monday morning to find a substantial financial bonus in his account. On his desk, he found instructions to attend live testing in the main hanger at oh nine hundred hours.

Perhaps due to Blake’s one-man war against animal testing, the board had this time provided a live human specimen. One of the slave grades, Avon understood from his briefing documents. Someone who had been purchased especially for this experiment. Three other someones had also been purchased, in case further experimentation needed to be carried out. They were being held in a new silo just off the main hanger.

“What the _hell_ is this?” Avon snarled, slamming his orders down on the desk in front of Hunt. “You had something to do with this, I know you did.”

The Head of Engineering had jumped slightly at the sound of the clipboard hitting the desk, and was now trying to look as though he hadn’t. “Don’t be-”

“ _Deadlines_ coming up?” Avon demanded. He could remember being more furious, but not recently. To anyone who understood the project, these orders made no sense. They could only damage the work that was being done and the reputation of everyone involved. And, of course, end the lives of the test subjects. Yes, they could do that too.

Hunt continue to bluster. “It’s come down from the board, but I believe it’s all perfectly clear-”

“Oh, I understand what we’re doing,” Avon said. “I just don’t understand why. Do you enjoy the prospect of picking dead slave out of your equipment?”

“The teleport has been calibrated for human subjects,” Hunt explained. “How can we possibly know if it works-?”

“It _doesn’t_ work,” Avon said through his teeth. “Not entirely, not consistently, _not_ enough to risk people’s lives.”

“We’re not risking _people’s_ lives,” Hunt said. “Slaves, Dr Avon. That’s all it is. The board isn’t asking you to step into the machine yourself.”

A not unsurprising attitude for an Alpha and an idiot, but not one Avon found it easy to empathise with. It wasn’t as though slaves were another species one could never transition into. Anybody who put so much as a foot out of line could be shipped out to Domo, and then shipped back again with a collar around their neck and no rights of any kind. Anyone at all. Avon valued his freedom almost more than he valued his life. The idea of being a slave disgusted and terrified him, but unlike Hunt he could imagine it. And he could imagine it all the more easily when other people were being treated as objects in front of him.

“I must remember to send a personal note of thanks,” Avon said flatly to Hunt.

He glanced at the clock on Hunt’s desk. Twenty minutes until the experiment. Enough time to stop it perhaps. He was of the same rank as Hunt. If Hunt could order this, and Avon had no doubt he _had_ ordered it, perhaps _he_ could stop it. And if not – well, he’d think about that.

“I assume I have the right to, at least, check the final calibrations on the prototype?” he asked Hunt.

“That _is_ your job,” Hunt said and Avon strode out without bothering to thank him for his condescension.

He was planning to go back to his office, call someone important and shout at them until they changed their mind, but on the way he passed Blake’s desk.

Surprisingly Blake was already at work, despite what must have been a weekend of getting drunk, high and shagged as often as possible. His computer was on, but he seemed to be staring through his computer screen, rather than at anything displayed on it.

Avon touched him on the shoulder and Blake jumped as Hunt had done and almost choked on the pen he’d been chewing.

“Avon-?”

“You’re sleeping with someone on the board, aren’t you, Blake?” Avon said without preamble. It wasn’t something he wanted to think about it, but it was a useful contact to have and might be a better way of getting what he wanted.

“What?” Blake said.

“This isn’t personal,” Avon said. “I’m only interested if there’s any reason to think you might be able to stop today’s experiments with a vizcall.”

“No,” Blake said. He threw the pen onto the desk in disgust. “I’ve tried, and the answer is no. That’s the problem with a board – unlike the rest of us, they have _democracy_.”

Avon tried not to think of which of the powerful, influential old men it was that Blake was fucking; which of them it was who hadn’t been able to help him. The women were presumably off limits, given Blake’s inclinations, but that left four or five board members who could be screwing the same man Avon was.

Not that it was important, he reminded himself. He was about to become an accessory to murder, and without any good reason. That was the most infuriating part. It was all pointless. Pointless slaughter that he would be responsible for. It would be attached to his records forever, and while some employers would similarly not bat an eyelid to see it there, others still clung to their fragile morals. There was no way of knowing who would reject him in the future, how his future career would be affected by what he did today, or if he would ever be able to forget the faces of the men and women who would be presented to him to slaughter in the name of Hunt’s budgetary concerns.

Who Blake chose to exchange bodily fluids with had to be less important than that.

“I’ll make some calls of my own,” he told Blake. With luck there would still be time to avert the tests. Blake nodded without really looking at him. He too seemed to think there were more important things to worry about at the moment.

“This is what you meant, isn’t it?” Avon said. “This... is what happens next.”

Blake looked up at him. “Oh, I think this is just the beginning,” he said darkly.

Avon left him to brood and went to make a number of angry vizcalls of his own. As Blake had intimated, nobody he could reach had the power to call the tests off on their own, even if they’d wanted to, which most of them didn’t unless Avon could prove a lot of money would be wasted. The decision had to be ratified by a group who met on a monthly basis.

Disgusted Avon returned to the main hanger, which had been set aside for testing. The large room had plexiglass windows, and the whole of the engineering and analytics departments seemed to be clustered on the other side, except for Avon, Hunt, and Reeve who had been selected by Hunt to make any adjustments Avon felt he was incapable of making himself. Blake was standing on the other side of the glass with everyone else. He’d positioned himself almost exactly opposite where Avon would be sitting, and his eyes followed Avon as he walked across the open space towards the testing area.

Avon connected his laptop to the primary teleport control booth, and brought up its current settings. The whole process was also being monitored by the project computers, which would be able to see any changes he made – unless he was very clever about it.

Fortunately, even on a bad day, Avon was easily very clever. Although he’d had hardly any time to write a masking programme, most of the work could be done in the moment. In fact, the actual programming and re-programming he needed to do was simple: much easier than the work he’d done in most of his successful cons. The main difficulty was that at any moment someone competent might actually _look_ at the badly performing teleport and work out what had been done to it. That meant Avon would have to sit next to it all day and repel anyone who got within a metre of it.

Fortunately a reputation for perfectionism and irascibility would, in this, be to his advantage.

Reeve had a box of tools with him, and Avon selected a thin laser probe, stepped up into the booth and slid the probe inside the port that controlled the beam settings. On returning to his computer, he saw the settings apparently minutely altered, though he had in fact just turned off the teleport functionality. Anybody stepping inside the prototype booth should find themselves subjected to a dim light, and nothing more. It was still pointless. But it was _less_ pointless than murdering them.

The first slave was being brought over by a trooper, perhaps the same one who had escorted Blake out of Avon’s office on his first day on the project. In contrast to the thick, black uniform of the trooper, the slave was in an off-grey tunic. He was a thin man with dull, listless eyes. A Delta, or a born slave, perhaps. Nobody Avon knew.

 _This isn’t worth it,_ Avon thought to himself as the man was prodded into the booth _._ The risks if he were found out were considerably higher than the risks associated with simple theft. Sabotage of major Federation projects was looked upon as terrorism. It would be deportation to a penal colony at the very least.

But it was too late to change the settings now. People would ask questions. It would look even more suspicious.  He would have to go through with it. 

He turned to Reeve, who was sitting by the controls.

“Activate.”

*

“And you were so worried it would kill someone,” Hunt said scathingly after thirty-six tests had been conducted on four subjects over a course of eight hours. Avon had refused lunch, and his eyes ached from staring at his various screens. But they were all still alive. Every single person who had stepped into the teleport was still alive.

"It didn’t even work five per cent of the time!” Hunt continued.  
  
“At least it didn’t explode,” Reeve said cheerfully.

He seemed not to mind that, at several points during the day, he'd attempted to do his job and been verbally savaged (and in one case bodily thrown out of the way) for his trouble. Avon was fairly sure his own behaviour would be attributed to the stress of watching a machine he’d been recently paid for completely... fail repeatedly over an entire day.

Actually he hadn't had to fake most of his irritation. His mood was about as black as he'd been pretending it was. Five per cent success wasn’t good enough to introduce human test subjects into the mix, but it _was_ a sign they were headed in the right direction. Avon felt sure that, if he’d been able to use the day for something useful, rather than sabotage, he would have been able to make progress. Perhaps they would be up to ten per cent success by now.

Further live testing was scheduled for the rest of the week, too, though it was possible it would be cancelled by the next day. A lot of expensive people had spent the day doing nothing. Fewer would stay to watch tomorrow’s tedious repetition of the same non-events, though some still would. If nothing else, Avon and Hunt and Reeve would have to spend another day in the hanger, watching the same thing not happen. Any board in their right mind would arrange for the tests to be cancelled, though Avon thought that _he_ would probably be the one shouted at if they did. His earlier attempts to stop the testing were now presumably being re-cast as a pathetic attempt to save himself this embarrassment, rather than as a scientist’s rational appraisal of the facts.  
  
The mass of onlookers parted before him as he emerged from the hanger, clearly unwilling to subject themselves to any of the abuse Reeve had enjoyed throughout the day. Avon had expected this, and he’d expected Blake alone to be left – Blake the only one willing and interested in engaging with him about what had happened. Blake had never backed down or away from anything in his life, and it seemed unlikely he would start with a lover’s temper tantrum.

As he’d packed away his laptop, Avon had, for the first time, thought about how much he _didn_ _’_ _t_ want to see Blake this evening. Blake would worry at the issue of the repeated failure of the prototype all evening. He would have theories based on the incorrect data he’d spent the day gathering, and Avon would have to dismiss those theories without admitting that he knew the data was incorrect.

Like everyone else, Blake would think Avon was closed off and emotionally withdrawn because he’d failed. If he touched Avon, it would be with pity; if he smiled at him it would be with understanding; and all the time Avon would know that he’d _succeeded_. He’d fooled everyone and saved four people, and he’d be unable to tell Blake this because it wasn’t fair to involve Blake in terrorism, even by association.

It wasn’t exactly _safe_ to tell him either. Avon didn’t think Blake would turn him in... but then he’d been wrong about people before.

He was almost back at his own office before he realised that Blake hadn’t intercepted him, and wasn’t comforting or interrogating him. That didn’t make sense. Blake had been standing at the window when Avon had closed his laptop for the evening. Avon had looked up and seen Blake smile at him, presumably the first of numerous attempts to cheer him up after a miserable day. Avon had leaned down to put the laptop back in its case, Hunt had mocked him for fearing that anyone would die, Reeve had said how nice it was that the prototype hadn’t exploded, and Avon had left the hanger. It had taken less than two minutes.

Where could Blake have gone in that time? Well, he would have to be found and told that Avon did not want him to come round this evening.

Avon retraced his steps. Still no Blake. Simmons, who usually sat opposite Blake, had returned to her desk by now, although she was making an effort not to look up at Avon in case he wanted to engage her in conversation.

“What happened to him?” Avon said. She didn’t acknowledge his presence, so he snapped her name. “ _Simmons_ -”

“Said he had to run or he’d miss dinner with someone named Fitz,” she said, still not looking up. Then she did look up and he saw the embarrassment and – yes, there it was –  _pity_ in her face as she said, “Sorry.”

Avon’s lip curled. “ _Perfect_.”

He went home feeling more irritable than ever.

*

When he arrived back at work the next morning, Avon found there were six troopers standing outside rather than the usual two. This had happened on two previous occasions since Avon had joined the Project, though on both of those previous occasions he'd still found the troopers exchanging jokes, furtively drinking from early morning thermoses and using the spare security monitor to catch up on last night's vizsoap. This time they were all standing to attention.  
  
“Which minor politician are we trying to impress today?" Avon asked dryly of the trooper at the front of the group. Presumably whoever it was would be coming to see the tests - the _failing_ tests. He felt yesterday's irritation rising quickly in him again.  
  
The trooper ignored the question. "Please identify yourself and present a form of secure ID," he said instead.  
  
"Dr Kerr Avon. I've worked here more than a month," Avon said. "And in that month nobody has asked me for identification, because they know there's a small camera built into the gate that checks that my eyes are the eyes of the person I say I am. They've put their trust, rather admirably I think, in the idea that it's more difficult to change your _eyes_ than it is to lose a piece of plastic."  
  
"If you don't have ID, sir, you'll have to step away from the doorway."  
  
"I do have ID," Avon said. "But I'm also curious about your methods. The perils of being a scientist." He held out his ID card and the trooper took it, inspected it, and handed it back with a nod.  
  
"Sorry, sir, but we have to check everyone. Yesterday someone managed to change their eyes, and there’s a right mess in there today."  
  
Avon looked up at him sharply. "What do you mean?"  
  
"I mean someone broke in," the guard said. "The cameras didn't get anything, so we don't know who. But whoever it was let out the slaves you had stored in the back, and destroyed some expensive hunk of junk.”

“The teleport prototype?” Avon said. The guard nodded. “All right,”Avon said. “Let me in. I want to see the damage myself.”

Behind the iris-scanner, the reception area looked basically untouched. It was as though nothing had happened, except that people were standing around and talking about what they’d seen through the windows onto the main hanger bay. It seemed to be considerably more interesting than a teleport prototype that didn’t work.

Avon passed his own office without going in and walked straight to engineering, which was swarming with other black-clad troopers. He walked over to the main hanger.

Through the plexiglass windows, Avon could see the remains of the teleport prototype and the wide radius of soot from a bomb blast. If prototype thirteen had ever worked, it certainly wouldn’t now.  Avon allowed himself to feel relief. He would not have to fake any more tests today. The terrorists had unwittingly done him a favour. 

On an area of clean wall, someone had painted the words: _Your slaves are free. Are you?_

“Just what we needed,” Avon said out loud, hearing the sound of familiar footsteps behind him. “Inspirational quotations for the workplace.”

“Don’t worry. They’ll wash it off by lunchtime,” Blake said.

“And we’ll rebuild the prototype in a week,” Avon said. “As hollow gestures go, this one seems particularly useless. The prototype they blew up didn’t even work.”

“Didn’t it?” Blake said.

 _He knows,_ Avon thought. His muscles tightened with panic, and then relaxed. With the teleport prototype gone, and the computer Avon had used to work the scam locked with unbreakable encryptions, there wasn’t really any proof, and you needed proof or a confession to accuse an Alpha. Blake wouldn’t be able to do anything with that knowledge, even if he wanted to. He just wouldn’t bother Avon with trivial questions or sympathy. Another weight off Avon’s mind.

“You saw the tests,” Avon said.

Blake’s eyebrows rose and nodded hugely, as though he’d just remembered that. It was ridiculous comedic overacting, and it might well get them into trouble. It was also rather sweet.

“Yes, of course,” Blake said. “How could I forget? Well, I’d better get back to work then. Apparently we have a lot to do.” He turned away, and then back to Avon. “I’ll be round at six tonight, if you can bear any more of my company.”

“I’ll endure it,” Avon told him, his heart light for the first time in days.

*

Blake slept at Avon’s flat again twice more that week, left early on one night, and missed Thursday completely. On Friday he pointed out that his own flat was four monorail stops closer to Aquitar Project headquarters than Avon’s. Avon conceded this logic and that Blake’s flat wasn’t much worse than his own, and privately that Blake was less likely to be able to leave if he was at his own place.

It wasn’t an ideal set-up because Avon liked having his own space, but it was workable until the eighth night he stayed there when Avon was woken in the middle of the night by the sound of knocking.

Blake was a heavier sleeper than him and simply turned over, away from Avon and the noise, but Avon was instantly awake. With curfew in effect as of (he checked the bedside clock) four hours previously, there was no way that anybody should be knocking on Blake’s door unless it was a troop of Federation guards. Presumably, though, if it were Federation guards they’d knock more loudly and perhaps shout what they’d come about.

Avon considered answering the door himself, and then dismissed this idea. Perhaps it was simply a case of mistaken address. The knocking continued. Avon shook Blake’s arm and, when that didn’t work, hissed his name.

“ _Blake_.”

Slowly Blake’s eyes flickered open, and he smiled sleepily at Avon. “What is-?”

The knocking came again, and Blake eyes widened in alarm. With none of the apparent tiredness of earlier, he clambered out of bed before the knocker had struck twice more. From the bed, Avon heard the door slide open and then a whisper of voices from Blake and the other man. In another moment Blake returned, walked through the bedroom to the bathroom, and then went back to the door. Again, another quiet exchange, and then the door slid shut again.

Blake returned to bed. One of his arms closed around Avon and dragged him closer.  He pressed a kiss to the back of Avon’s head, and then relaxed into him, the adrenalin of the potential crisis presumably draining away.

“So we’re not going to be murdered in our beds?” Avon prompted.

“Not tonight,” Blake said with what sounded like bitter amusement. Avon let the silence hang awkwardly for a moment longer, and eventually Blake filled it with an explanation. “Bail is an ex-lover of mine. He wanted to see me; I sent him away.”

“With something from the bathroom,” Avon prompted steadily, although some foolish part of him was glad that Blake was turning away other men. “Drugs, I assume.” There was nothing else in Blake’s bathroom of any interest, except the numerous arm-splinting materials.

“I needed to give him something,” Blake agreed. He smoothed Avon’s hair away from his face. “Go to sleep, Avon.”

Avon thought about pointing out what a poor long-term strategy this was. If Blake gave this man, Bail, drugs to go away, then Bail would probably try his luck again. But on the other hand, it had solved the immediate problem. If there had been a violent brawl outside Blake’s apartment at three in the morning, then troopers might well have been called.

“You’ll talk to him later, of course,” Avon said by way of compromise. “Make it clear that this is unacceptable.” He noted, pleased with himself, that this statement fit with his promise not to ask Blake about his personal life. He wasn't asking - he was just telling. Not breaking his promise. Keeping control of the relationship.

“I’ll talk to him,” Blake agreed. “He won’t come around again. I promise. Now go back to sleep.” His tone was calm, and might well have been described by someone else as 'reassuring'. That hypothetical observer might have felt the same way about the hand that was still stroking Avon’s hair.

Avon drifted uneasily back to sleep. He did not feel reassured. And he did not feel he was keeping control of the relationship.

*

He left early the next morning without waiting for Blake to get up.

As he let himself out through the front door, Avon had to stand aside to let a thin young man with bright, white-blond hair into the building.

 _Probably going to see Blake as well,_ Avon thought irritably, knowing it probably wasn't true. Even if it was, Avon knew had nothing to reproach Blake with, since he'd made it clear Blake owed him nothing. He glared at another passing man, clad in a maroon tunic that clashed with his red hair, and was pleased to see the man start back in alarm. That made him feel better, if only slightly.

As he waited on the platform for the monorail, his pager beeped indicating a new message. Avon pulled it out and read the message, which was from Blake. _Thanks for not waiting - stops me feeling bad about lingering over coffee. I'll see you at lunch._ Which meant Blake was pretending nothing had happened. Avon shoved the pager back into his pocket without bothering to reply. Two could pretend nothing was happening just as well as one.

And besides, he would see Blake at lunch. There was no need to obsessively reply to his messages.

A gust of wind and a whistling of the rails had already indicated the approach of the train, and now it pulled into the platform. Just before the doors opened, Avon glanced down the platform to make sure he was standing in the least crowded spot and caught sight of a flash of white-blond hair. He frowned and shaded his eyes to get a better look. The doors opened and people began to stream into the carriage, giving him a brief view of the man's face. It _was_ the same man who had gone into Blake's building at the same time Avon had left it. Presumably he must have ducked back into the building to retrieve something, forgotten keys or something similar, and then rushed to make this train. In contrast, Avon must have dawdled, too wrapped up in thoughts of Blake and Blake's business to walk at the most efficient speed.

His non-relationship was leaking into his real life again, Avon thought irritably as the doors of the monorail closed behind him.

*

Without really thinking about it, he drifted over to one of the Aquitar Project's other buildings at around eleven o'clock. They had a technical-support unit there that he hadn't made contact with yet, despite working for the Project for more than two months. When he returned at about three, far too late for lunch, he found a note from Blake on his desk, even though Blake had also paged him. This note read: _Must have just missed you. I'll be at your flat at 8 tonight. If you think I'll miss you again there, let me know._

Avon crumpled the note in his hand, then smoothed it out again. Eight was relatively late for Blake, who usually turned up at about six thirty if he was coming over. What was he doing? It wasn't likely that he was staying late for work. Avon kept an eye on what Blake's whole department were doing and they were neither close to a breakthrough nor so far behind that overtime was needed. Besides, Blake wasn't particularly dedicated to his work and barely showed up on time, let alone worked longer hours than he was contracted for.

It was much more likely that he was meeting someone before coming to see Avon. Perhaps the man who had turned up at his flat the night before. If he were doing that, Avon thought idly without examining his own motivations too carefully, where would he go? Not back to his flat, surely. That wouldn't send a good message if Blake was making it clear that Bail should stay out of his life now.

Avon was also fairly sure that Blake didn't bring other men back to his flat. He'd never seen signs off their presence and it seemed likely that there _would_ be some, given that Blake didn't have to lie about the fact that he was seeing other people and that he didn't seem to hide Avon's possessions when Avon wasn't there. Avon had several sets of clothes at Blake's flat now, as well as two spare computers and a coffee machine that lived on top of Blake's microwave. Blake was also something of a slob and rarely changed his sheets. If Blake had fucked someone else in his bed, Avon knew he would have noticed. He could only lie to himself so far, and he knew his eyes flicked to the rumpled bedding every time he arrived in the room – was it rumpled in the same way as they had been when he left? It seemed to be. And the sofa seemed to be clean, though there was no way of knowing what had happened in the shower. Surely even Blake would get tired of shower sex eventually, though.

Perhaps Blake would go to Bail’s flat. Or somewhere else entirely.

 _Not that it matters,_ Avon thought and screwed up the note again. He turned his computer back on. _I can't ask him,_ he thought as he stared through the blocky green text on the screen. _But I_ could _follow him._

He shook himself. There was no point in following Blake. It was an invasion of privacy that Avon would be furious about if he were in Blake's position. He wasn't going to do it. There wasn't even a reason to be particularly interested in this man - one of many Blake had met over the course of the last few months. It was just that something didn't feel right about the late-night visit and rapid dismissal.

 _Forget it,_ Avon told himself. _Go home, shower, change, eat something, wait for Blake._ The litany of his life suddenly seemed incredibly depressing.

 _I could always eat out tonight,_ Avon thought, and the image of the restaurant that Blake had taken him to that first night rose unbidden in his mind.

*

"My name is Bail - I'm here to see Roj Blake. Has he arrived yet?"

A wide smile broke over the maître d's face. "Well, a friend of Roj is always welcome here." He winked and Avon must have flinched, because the man's face grew worried. "You... _are_ a friend of Roj's?"

Avon smiled thinly. "In a manner of speaking. We have sex regularly," he explained in response to the man's uneasy look.

Presumably his usual brand of abrasive sarcasm was not ideal for the purposes of remaining undercover, but the maître d's familiarity with Blake had irritated Avon and he hadn't been able to suppress the instinct to try and upset him. Internally he winced - but the statement seemed not to have had its intended effect.

The maître d' tapped the side of his nose and grinned. "Of course you do, sir."

Avon felt his expression grow even blanker as he grew more annoyed. Surely Blake had better taste than to sleep with _this_ man.

"Roj hasn't arrived yet, and," the maître d' was scanning down the list of reservations, "he doesn't seem to have made a reservation, but there _is_ one in Mr Foster's name. Is that your party?"

"Obviously," Avon said.

Obviously, he had no idea who Foster was, but he was clearly someone who knew Blake, and who saw him regularly at this place. Whoever he was, therefore, he was someone Avon was interested in. He couldn't be the same man who'd arrived at Blake's flat in the middle of the night or the maître d' would have recognised the Christian name Avon had given him. Nor was he Fell Reeve, the man Avon had first seen Blake here with either and whom he was now relatively convinced Blake had never slept with, since he'd been shown pictures of Reeve's wife and children.

 _Though_ that _doesn’t prove anything,_ Avon thought bitterly.

He was shown to the same booth as he had been shown to the first time he'd been here with Blake. The candles seemed to have been replaced with brand new ones that had yet to be burnt, but otherwise it looked exactly the same. Would Avon like to see the menu slides? No, he wasn't hungry, thank you.

In fact, Avon felt nothing but dread coiling in the bottom of his stomach. What would he say if Blake didn't turn up and he'd just invited himself to a stranger's dinner by accident? _I'm sorry I made a mistake._ Or perhaps - _I'm sorry, but are you sleeping with the man I'm also sleeping with? How is he when he's with you? He's funny with me. Clever and wry, vaguely insulting but I like that. Very good at giving blowjobs - perhaps you've noticed._

Obviously not. That would be insane. And what would he do if Blake himself did arrive? Surely that was just as bad. Spring up, pointing an accusing finger at him. _Ah ha. I knew it - I knew you were meeting other men when you weren't with me, because you told me. You told me you weren't going to be at my flat until eight. You're doing exactly what you said you were doing, and I hate it. You have to stop it. It’s pulling me apart._

He felt like throwing up. Why had he done this to himself? What was the point? It wouldn't stop Blake doing what he was doing, and it certainly wasn't helping Avon.

He glanced across the restaurant and saw the man with the white-blond hair from earlier approaching another empty table. He seemed to be having some difficulty with one of his legs, and the waiter had to help him with his chair.

What the _hell_ was he doing here? If he lived near Blake, then this wasn't at all convenient for him. Unless he worked on the Project too, but Avon knew he would have seen him.

 _I'm being followed_ , Avon thought with sudden lucidity. He had no idea why - perhaps Tynus or someone similar had blabbed about his previous extra-legal affairs or his idea for the bank fraud, and the Administration were checking up on him to make sure he wasn't planning to damage the Aquitar Project. Or more likely, perhaps, the man was doing exactly what Avon himself was doing and tracking people who seemed interested in Blake. Perhaps it was the obsessive Bail, who had come to Blake’s flat in the middle of the night, unable to live without him or take no for an answer.

From the outside, it seemed even more pathetic than it did from the inside.

Suddenly decisive, Avon got to his feet and began to leave. As he approached the exit he saw Blake enter the restaurant with another man, and ducked into an alcove. He didn’t have a plan for what would happen next – he just knew he didn’t want Blake to know he was here. It was pathetic, humiliating, he wished he had never come. The maître d’ would presumably explain that a friend of Blake’s had arrived, but would he know it was Avon? Avon had given a false name, and the description Blake would be given if he asked (Alpha, dark haired, claimed to be sleeping with you, sir) would probably apply to numerous men. 

Avon risked a glance out into the restaurant and saw Blake and his friend being shown to the same boot he had recently vacated. The other man seemed to be about forty - with slightly crumpled, boxer's features and a mismatched outfit. Neither young, nor handsome – it was even possible he was a _Delta_ , judging by his clothes. Not the sort of man Avon had expected Blake to cheat on him with, but, as he watched, Blake took the other man’s hand across the table and smiled.

Again, Avon felt the bile rising in his throat, but he had no desire to confront Blake. Blake was merely doing exactly what he said he was doing.

Avon waited until his path from the alcove to the exit was clear and hurried out, refusing to let the maître d’call him back.

*

At only a few minutes past eight, Blake arrived at Avon’s flat. Avon met him at the door, still fully dressed in the clothes he’d worn during the day and at the restaurant where he’d seen Blake .

“I don’t feel very well,” he told Blake. “You should go.”

Without being bidden, his eyes scanned Blake for signs of alternative ownership. Was that a shadow at his throat or a love bite? Was his hair mussed by the wind or by someone else’s hands? If Avon kissed him now, would he just taste Blake or would he taste the telltale saltiness of someone else’s semen? No, surely Blake would have the good sense to brush his teeth before coming here.

“Or you could let me in, and I could look after you,” Blake suggested.

“I don’t need looking after,” Avon said. “I don’t need anything from you. Goodnight, Blake.” He let the door slide shut and pressed his forehead against it. On the other side of the door, he could hear Blake pausing a moment, as though trying to work out whether he should press Avon on this, break down the door and sweep him into his arms. Then Blake turned and walked away.

 _I hate it,_ Avon thought. _You have to stop it. It’s pulling me apart._

He turned and walked back to the bedroom alone.

*

If Blake noticed that Avon no longer wanted to stay at his flat, then he was clever enough not to mention it. Gradually over a week, things between them went back to normal – or at least, to the way they had been before Bail. Or at least, Avon began _treating_ Blake as though things were back to normal.

At the back of his mind, the events of the previous week were ticking away.

Who was Bail? Had Blake spoken to him about ending their relationship? Why had he come to Blake’s flat in the middle of the night? And who was the man Blake had met instead, and what did Blake see in him? ‘Foster’, a rough age range and a recent location was not enough to narrow the search parameters in the Central personnel database, neither was ‘Bail’ and no age range. Avon had almost a thousand suspects for each of the positions, and he knew he didn’t want to speak to any of them. He just wanted _Blake_ never to see either of them again. He didn't want Blake to speak to anyone again, and he hated that he felt that way. So much for staying uninvolved.

He saw the man with the white-blond hair on three further occasions – in a café; waiting for the monorail at Avon’s stop; waiting in a taxation queue. All of them might have been accidents. Or they might not have been.

“Did you ever speak to that man who came round in the night?” he asked Blake casually one Sunday morning.

They were lying together on Avon’s sofa, a newscast providing a background commentary on how wonderful life in the Federation was and how lucky they were to live there. As usual, Blake had insisted they put the programme on, and had then spent most of it ignoring what was being said in favour of bothering Avon.

Blake glanced up at him from where he’d been undoing the numerous tiny buttons on Avon’s shirt, and nodded. He’d almost got all the buttons now, Avon saw. There were just three or four still binding the bottom of his shirt together over his stomach, just above the rather obvious erection that had been the inevitable result of Blake hovering around his groin for the last five minutes. What Avon had _wanted_ to ask him was why he wasn't getting on with it. All that mattered to most of him was that Blake was about to move onto his trousers and then his underwear and then what was beneath his underwear, but his mouth clearly had other ideas. 

“Why do you ask?” Blake said.

“I’m in fear for my unbroken night’s sleep, what do you think?”

Blake huffed a laugh and pressed a kiss to Avon’s chest between the vee of his open shirt. “Well, you can relax. He won’t come round again.”

“ _Relax_?” Avon said.

“Mm. I know that’s difficult for you,” Blake said slowly, undoing the top button of Avon’s trousers. “And at this point in time not _particularly_ desirable-”

“It’s not particularly comforting either,” Avon said, trying to wriggle away as Blake pulled his zip down. “What does he look like?”

“Not as handsome as you,” Blake said. He lowered his voice to a husky caress. “Do we have to talk about this now?" He ran a careful and suggestive hand over Avon’s cock, still constrained by his underwear if no longer by his trousers. Blake’s hand said there were much better things they could be doing now than talking about someone else.

Avon’s breath shivered in his throat. Even after weeks of sleeping together, Blake’s voice and his hands still had a ridiculous effect on him. He shut his eyes and tried to stop listening to his brain.

“No, we don’t have to talk about this now," he said."

“Thank you,”Blake said, and returned to the final buttons of Avon’s shirt. “With no offence meant to my oratory skills, I think there are better things I could be doing with my mouth at this moment.”

 _How is he when he's with you?_ Avon thought. _He's funny with me. Very good at giving blowjobs._

“Blond hair?” he said before Blake could pull his underwear down.

“I’m sorry?” Blake said.

“Bail - does he have blond hair?” Avon said. “ _White_ blond hair. Pale lips and eyebrows, a straight nose, and a limp?”

Blake was frowning now. He sat up, letting Avon push himself back into a sitting position as well. “That’s a very specific guess.”

“But a  _correct_ one?” Avon said, fastening his trousers.

“No, but I do know who you’re describing. What I don’t know is _why_ you’re describing him.”

“He’s... interested in me,” Avon said, and for a moment he saw what looked like anger and jealousy flaring in Blake’s eyes. How absurd. He almost laughed as Blake said,

“He’s _what_?”

“Only from a distance. But repeatedly. I assumed he’d heard tales of my pleasant disposition, and had chosen not to risk speaking to me without an introduction. I also assumed he was something to do with you, and I was right, wasn’t I?”

“This man - he’s following you?”

“Apparently.”

Blake got off the sofa, as if he had to get out of this conversation, and paced away towards the kitchen area, chewing on one of his fingernails again. Avon watched him through narrowed eyes. Eventually Blake said,

“I’ll ask him to stop. I don’t know what’s going on, but he should know better. Is anyone else following you?”

“Should they be?”

“Only if you’re a bank robber,” Blake said. 

There was no way Blake could know that, Avon reminded himself. Besides, it wasn’t accurate. He had plans to steal money from the Central bank, but nothing that had come to fruition yet. Nobody could pin anything on him. Still, it was perhaps best to direct the conversation back to somewhere Blake was on the back foot, rather than him.

“There is one other man I’ve seen around,” Avon said. “An older man – grey hair, and non-standard clothing-”

Blake gaped at him. “ _Bran Foster’s_ been following you?”

“I didn’t say that. I said that I’d seen him,” Avon said, taking note of the name. That would narrow down the list of suspects significantly, perhaps even to one particular man, who he could find and... not speak to. “I’ve seen him with you too. A little old for you, I thought at the time, though it’s none of my business.”

“Not at the moment,” Blake said, “but it could be. God knows, Avon, I’ve been wanting to tell you-”

Avon flinched. “If this is a clumsy attempt to get me to agree to a threesome, it’s _not_ going to work, Blake.”

Blake's eyebrows rose in surprise - he looked for a moment as though he was going to laugh, and then he managed to turn it into a weak smile instead.

"Well, you can't blame a man for trying."

Every time, Avon thought. Every time he thought he knew the worst of Blake, Blake would surprise him. He rose from the sofa, unable to keep up the pose of casual indifference any longer. If he didn't shout at Blake, he would start crying.

" _Wrong_ ," he told Blake sharply. ”That is exactly what I can and will do. I blame you Blake. This is all your fault."

"I _know_ ," Blake retorted, his voice too loud and too bitter for the guilty party in this conversation. "Of _course_ I know that. But there's nothing I can do about it."

" _Wrong_ ," Avon said again. "If will-power fails, as it obviously has, you could consider _therapy_ -"

" _Therapy_?" Blake repeated, as though he'd rarely been so insulted.

“Hypnosis,” Avon continued, continuing to speak faster than his brain could chart the consequences of his actions. “Aversion-therapy; manacles, chaining yourself to your desk - you might even enjoy that one. And if all of that fails, Blake, you could just leave me alone."

Blake stared at him. ”And that's what you want, is it?"

"The manacles? No, not really my kink."

"You want to be left alone?” Blake repeated.

"I want _you_ to leave me alone," Avon told him. “Forever, if possible.”

"Fine," Blake said.

"Good," Avon said.

"Have a nice life, Avon,” Blake said. He slammed his hand against the door button and left.

Avon swung round and seized the mug of tea Blake had made for him almost two hours earlier. In one fluid movement, he hurled it against the wall where it shattered. The tea he’d allowed to go cold while he’d been pretending to watch the news and trying not to think about who else Blake was sleeping with, began to puddle on his wood panelling.

In the background, the news was still playing. It had moved onto a slightly more interesting section now. Somebody who didn’t share the values of the Federation had left a bomb in one of the local schools. It had exploded during the night and the building was now in smithereens. As in the Aquitar Project bombing, there seemed to be writing scrawled onto one of the remaining school walls, but the cameraman refused to focus on it, so it was impossible to tell what it was.

Avon wondered absently whether the people who had been responsible for the school’s destruction felt as hollow and miserable about the gesture as he did about the broken mug.

He turned the television off.

If he hadn’t asked Blake about Bail, he would now be lying on the sofa in a post-coital haze. Blake would probably be lying on top of him, warm and sated, and pressing lazy kisses against his jawline. They might have managed another day without arguing about where Blake went when he wasn’t with Avon. But it was better this way, wasn’t it? He’d done the right thing. He’d done what he should have done weeks ago, and ended it.

Avon stood in his quiet flat, alone, listening to the sound of cold tea dripping slowly onto the floor.

 


	5. Chapter 5

It shouldn’t have been difficult to get over someone Avon had known for such a short time, but it was.

The problem was that he and Blake still worked in the same building. Avon thought he could probably have done significantly better if he hadn’t seen Blake in the corridors, or at his desk, or in the morning queue to get into the building _every day._ If he hadn’t seen Blake _every day,_ looking angry and desirable.

It would also have helped if Simmons _hadn’t_ come to knock on the door of his office, supposedly to drop off some more reports and actually to tell him that Blake had been in a terrible mood for days, and kept shouting at everyone over imaginary slights. Nobody had ever seen him like this for more than an afternoon - it must mean something, right? It must mean he wanted to get back together. Avon threw her out, and only realised his fingers had clenched when the pencil he’d been holding snapped in half.

As though acting out some sort of man-made pathetic fallacy, the terrorist attacks in the Dome had increased in frequency. Each time Avon arrived home and switched on the news, it would be to see that another building had been bombed, more angry words scrawled on walls. The Federation would protect him, though, the newscaster assured Avon. There was no need to worry.

A vicious, depressing two weeks passed. Avon tried to avoid going places he knew Blake might also be. He ate in his office, and handed off as much of the analysis work on the current prototype fourteen to the rest of his team. If he didn’t know what Blake was working on, he reasoned, then he wouldn’t be tempted to go down to engineering and speak to Blake about the mistakes he was making. He spent more time with the physicists in the other building, trying to help them work through their basic principles.

In his own time, he’d also re-built and was fine-tuning prototype thirteen in the living room of his own flat. When he’d had this idea initially, Avon had assumed this would be an excellent way of filling his evenings with something fiddly and technical. The work would, he thought, distract him from thinking about what, or rather _who,_ Blake might be doing in the same twilight hours. It was also genuinely possible that he would crack the problem of teleportation. If he did, then he’d have done it _outside_ the project space. If the Administration wanted his teleport (and they would want it), then they'd need to pay a considerable sum. A considerable sum _on top_ of Avon’s already considerable salary.

As a plan it should have had no draw-backs, but of course it did. In his office, Avon found himself distracted from the work he should have been doing by thoughts of refinements he could make to his own prototype. That wasn’t too bad, really, but if it went on much longer it might appear on his regular performance-review notes. What was worse, though, was that, while he was at home, soldering components together and making adjustments to motherboard configurations, he’d find himself thinking of the kind of person whose job it was to do this kind of thing. And what kind of comments that person might have made as he worked, and how his eyes crinkled when he smiled.

Presumably, Avon thought, what he should actually be doing was finding someone else to sleep with and obsess over. But he couldn’t make himself desire anyone else. Besides, if he chose a man, the odds were that it would turn out to be someone Blake had already fucked. Women would be safer, of course, but anyone Avon expressed an interest in would probably turn out to be Blake’s sister, or live next door to him. And Avon knew that, whoever he chose, he'd be thinking of Blake during every moment and considering it a betrayal.

He was thinking of Blake the day they were due to switch on prototype fourteen for the first time. Someone in the corridor had mentioned his name, or something that sounded like Blake’s name, and that had been enough to distract Avon for at least twenty minutes as he tried to read through his messages.

He almost flicked past the message about fourteen’s go-live (it was difficult to be interested in something you knew had been constructed as a result of faulty research), but his eyes caught on the familiar shape of Blake’s name at the top of the document.

The request to switch on had come from Blake. Blake had also put himself forward as the chief test-engineer after receiving confirming from Analysis. Apparently he’d received that confirmation that morning from Birtum Rabson, on behalf of Kerr Avon. That meant they would switch the prototype on soon - definitely within the hour, possibly even sooner than that.

Underneath the opening remarks there was a brief description of the innovations made with this prototype, and an architecture diagram. Avon studied it for a moment. The infrastructure looked relatively sound, though some more detail would have been helpful around the conversion units to ensure it was safe.

Rabson wasn’t a complete incompetent, though, and would have checked it. Avon tried to move onto the next message. It was about - something. He blinked and refocused. A lighter version of the aquatar alloy that would be useful in - some way. What was it? This was ridiculous. He forced himself to try and concentrate on what he was reading. A lighter version of the alloy that _would_ -

He put down the acetate message-cards, and turned back to his computer. In a few commands he'd called Rabson’s test reports on the fourteenth prototype, reports he’d earlier waved through without looking at closely. Everything looked fine and within acceptable parameters. He could see why Blake and his colleagues were about to switch the prototype on, _but_ \- he scrolled back to the top to check - no, there was nothing about the conversion units at all. Nobody had checked them. Presumably that was because those units had been proved before in other implementations. But this prototype was far more powerful than the previous ones. It wouldn’t manage the conversion properly, or even fail - it would just explode, and far more violently than any of the previous prototypes.

Later, Avon realised that he could probably have used the comms channels and stopped Blake that way. At the time he hadn’t hesitated. He’d just run from his office, down the corridor, past the various desks of his own department and into Engineering. They hadn’t bothered to move the device to the main hanger because they didn’t think there was any danger - it was just mounted on Simmons’s desk. Blake had his hand on the activation button of the thing that would kill him.

Avon shouted his name, and Blake looked up guiltily, as though he’d done something wrong. He’d already pressed the button, Avon realised. The glass of water that they were using as the Movable Object had already started to dematerialise.

 Without pausing to work out whether anyone else was also in danger, Avon crossed the final distance and shoved Blake down to the floor.

The prototype exploded. Avon felt the heat of it on his back, and a spattering of tiny parts colliding with his body. Then it was over, and they were both still alive, and he was still mostly on top of Blake, who seemed to think what had happened was quite funny.

“ _Idiot_ ,” Avon snarled, and leaned down and kissed Blake as fiercely as possible. For a moment, it felt wonderful - it felt like a relief. Blake’s fingers dug into his arms and his body arched up into Avon’s. Then Avon remembered they were in public. Then he remembered he wasn’t with Blake. Then he remembered he didn’t want to be with Blake.

He got to his feet, and brushed himself down.

“The problem is in the fuel converter. Assuming you can still find it,”he told the assembled engineers and walked off as quickly as he could without breaking into a run.

He could tell Blake was following him from the heavy sound of Blake’s footfalls and the way other people he’d passed were tutting irritably at having to move out of the way for _two_ inconsiderate people, one after the other. Avon reached his own door and opened it. As it began to shut behind him, Blake stuck a hand into the rapidly diminishing gap between the door and the door jam and yanked it back open.

“What was that, Avon?”

“I saved your life.”

“You _kissed_ me,” Blake said, as though this had been the more important of the two actions, which it was.

“I also kissed you,” Avon agreed. “But then, unlike you, I haven’t been treating my sexual frustration with geriatric Deltas.”

“Then you admit - you _are_ frustrated?”

“Only with your continued presence in my office,” Avon said. “Get out, and I’ll get over it.”

He leant heavily against the door button, and the door slid open again. Blake scowled at him and left. The door shut properly this time. Avon went back to his desk, sat down in his chair, and looked back at his computer monitor. But there was no point doing actual work on the project, since Blake and Rabson had destroyed the current prototype. With their carelessness, their lack of attention to detail, their stupid, stupid error that he’d allowed to go uncaught and which could have cost Blake his _life_ -

Avon noted, as he reached out to shut down the programme he’d been using, that his hands were shaking. He pressed them against each other in an effort to stop them doing it, and stood up. It was all right, he reminded himself. Blake was all right. Though he shouldn’t have been.

Deciding to go and do something that would in no way remind him of Blake for the rest of the day, Avon walked back over to the door. He opened it, and saw Blake leaning against the corridor wall opposite.

“If you’re looking for your desk, it’s that way,” Avon said, indicating the direction they’d both come from.

Blake rolled his eyes, and crossed his arms. “I just wanted to say thank you.”

“For kissing you?”

“For saving my life.”

“It was nothing,” Avon said, unable to think of anything more sensible to say in response.

“And the kiss?” Blake said, pushing himself away from the wall and walking closer.

“Well, exactly. That was nothing too.”

“Ah, I see,” Blake said. He was very close now, one hand coming up to cup Avon’s chin. “And what about this?” he asked, kissing Avon gently.

Avon let it happen for a moment, convinced that responding in any way would only encourage Blake. Then he remembered that he could push Blake away, but by then Blake was already drawing back, and it seemed to Avon that if Blake wanted to _stop_ then _he_ should probably try and continue to spite Blake. He caught the back of Blake’s head and pulled him down again. Blake made an alarmed noise, but his weight was still pressing Avon into the door, his erection digging into Avon’s thigh, and he was kissing Avon back, and he was alive, alive, alive.

The door slid open again - Blake must have found the button with his free hand, and Avon tugged Blake back into his office with him. It was six steps from the door to the desk, and Avon used those steps to undo the fastenings to Blake’s trousers. He felt the desk edge hit the back of his thighs, and pulled Blake down on top of him by the neck of Blake’s green tunic. A pot of pencils tipped and fell, scattering its contents over the floor, as Avon pushed himself back across the desk’s top, Blake on top of him. He felt paper sliding under his back, but he knew he could print those reports out again later. Blake, a few steps behind, reached down for Avon’s flies as Avon managed to navigate past Blake’s underwear and run his hand down Blake’s cock.

“ _Avon_ ,” Blake growled into Avon’s neck. He slid onto his side and Avon rolled with him, gasping as Blake’s hand wrapped around his cock and began to jerk savagely, as though Blake was desperate to bring him off first. “I’ve missed you,”Blake told him breathily as he thrust into Avon’s hand. “God, I’ve missed you.”

He pressed another kiss hard against Avon’s lips, his tongue groping for the roof of Avon’s mouth as he fucked Avon’s hand. Fortunately that stopped Avon replying, because some foolish part of him wanted to tell Blake that he’d been living in black and white for the last two weeks, and everything had been pointless until now. Blake stiffened, his mouth dropping open in the kiss. The hand on Avon’s cock stilled for a moment and then clenched again. The speed of his orgasm was almost extraordinary - as though _Blake_ had been the one denying himself any sexual company for the last two weeks.

 _If only,_ Avon thought, but Blake was still groaning his name and urging him on, and he almost let himself believe it. Avon pressed his own shoulder forward to push Blake onto his back, one of his own legs still on top of Blake. A few savage thrusts against Blake’s thigh and he came too, and let himself drop onto Blake’s chest.

Blake’s hand came up to stroke his cheek and his lips. Avon nipped at him until he withdrew and then pressed a kiss to Blake’s chest instead.

“You were supposed to leave me alone,”he pointed out.

Blake laughed, the sound rumbling comfortingly against Avon’s lips. “ _You_ started it.”

“A very sophisticated defence, Blake. Why don’t you try ‘everyone else was doing it’, and follow it up with ‘I tripped and fell’?”

“Well, I’ll try to do better next time.”

“There won’t be a next time, but I admire your willingness to change,” Avon said. “In the meantime, I want my coffee machine back.”

Blake peered down at him, presumably bemused by this non sequitur. “I’m sorry?”

“It’s still at your flat. Along with with several items of my clothing that I would also like back.”

“I can bring everything with me to to work tomorrow,” Blake said, beginning to sound distinctly annoyed now. Since this was what Avon had been aiming for, he was surprised that it didn’t make him feel better. Blake pulled away and began to do up his trousers.

“I’d prefer to get it back tonight, if it’s all the same to you,”Avon said, sitting up himself and sliding off the desk. “I can show myself in.”

“Avon, I _am_ actually busy tonight-”

“I thought you probably would be. Don’t worry - I can navigating around your flailing limbs and those of anyone else present. As much as I’d like to forget it, I do have extensive experience.”

“If it’s that important to you to have your coffee maker _tonight_ ,” Blake said, “I _will_ cancel my other plans for the evening.”

“It’s not important,” Avon told him. “I simply don’t see any reason I should have to abide by your schedule. I’ll see you at five and we can go home together. Shut the door on your way out.”

Blake glared at him, and strode out of the office.

It was almost as though they’d just broken up again, which suggested they’d almost been together again. All it had taken, Avon reflected, was a brief moment of distraction. Two kisses could have easily erased two weeks of good behaviour, leaving him right back beneath Roj Blake’s thumb.

Instead he’d upset Blake and ruined _Blake’s_ plans for the evening. For once. They’d also finally had sex in his office, something Avon had been fantasising about since his first day in the building. Not that that was the point _at all_. It hadn’t even been that comfortable or convenient.

Avon shook himself, and went to find something that would distract him until five o’clock.

*

It was an awkward monorail-ride back to Blake’s flat. The train was busy, and Blake and Avon were squashed up against each other for the entire journey, both determined not to make eye-contact. They’d ridden the monorail together like this before, about three weeks ago. Avon had been slightly drunk; Blake apparently more sober. Avon remembered exchanging humorous comments about the other passengers with Blake, and trying to bite Blake’s earlobe without anyone else noticing. This time they stared in opposite directions, and Avon fought to keep as much of his body away from Blake’s as he could. It made him tense and irritable.

They got off at the second stop and walked to Blake’s building together without speaking. Blake let them into his apartment. It looked almost exactly the same as it had the last time Avon had been there. Blake had a collection of old news-acetates out on the hallway table where they had clearly just been mounting up. Avon had actually picked them up and was about to throw them away before he remembered that he wasn’t staying and that he wasn't Blake’s housekeeper.

“Still unable to clean up after yourself?” he said to cover his mistake, handing the acetates to Blake, who took them with a roll of his eyes and threw them roughly towards the corner of the room.

Avon sighed theatrically. “Where are my things?”

“Where you left them, I expect,” Blake said. “Why? Don’t you remember?”

“You haven’t put them in a box for me.”

“Why _would_ I?” Blake said and stalked out of the corridor into the living room.

Avon heard the sound of the television being switched on, and the chatter of voices coming from its speaker. He could imagine Blake throwing himself onto the sofa and chewing moodily on his index finger while he pretended not to notice that Avon was going through his cupboards and drawers and removing the signs that he’d once been a regular visitor here. Blake’s attitude was annoying - one of them had the right to be angry, and it wasn’t Blake.

But Blake had always been self-centred, Avon reminded himself. Self-centred and unable to understand how his behaviour might affect others.

Avon left him to it. He went to the bedroom where he found that, as Blake had said, all of his clothes were still stacked neatly inside Blake’s concealed-wardrobe. His spare toothbrush was still standing next to Blake’s, as though he was going to need it again soon. There was even one of Avon’s slate-grey sleep shirts, caught in the folds of Blake’s sheets. Since Avon had stopped sleeping at Blake’s flat over a week before they’d broken up that meant that Blake hadn’t noticed the shirt was there and put it in the laundry for three or four _weeks_. That was impressive, even for Blake. Except -

No, that wasn’t quite right. The last time Avon had been in this apartment had been the morning after Blake’s friend Bail’s mysterious late-night visit. Avon had spent quite a lot of that night awake for various reasons. The way the room had looked then was etched into his memory. He was almost _certain_ the sheets had been blue that night. Now they were green. If that was right, then Blake must have changed them at some point. But Avon’s shirt was still in the bed. Blake wouldn’t have worn it himself. He seemed to believe pyjamas were one of life’s biggest cons, and anyway it would have been too tight to be comfortable. Had Blake given it to another lover to sleep in?

Warily Avon raised the shirt to his nose and inhaled. It smelled like Blake, nothing but Blake. Avon felt his eyes prickling and his mouth tightening at the familiar scent. He sat down quickly on Blake’s bed and glared off in the direction of the wall until he could get his emotions under control. It wasn’t just the smell of Blake that had unsettled him - it was the idea of what Blake might have done with Avon’s shirt in bed, if he hadn’t worn, or given it to someone else to wear, or left it there accidentally. The idea was quite vivid. It was also very distracting. Avon felt light-headed as the blood rushed away from the top of his body.

Blake must have heard the creaking of springs, because he appeared in the doorway. “Finished ransacking?”He clocked the shirt still held in Avon’s hand, and his composure seemed to drop for a moment before he pulled it back. “I’d offer you a drink after your hard work, but I seem to be down one coffee machine.

“I found this shirt in your bed,” Avon said, bringing his eyes up to meet Blake’s.

Blake made a face. “No stone left unturned. If you decide not to pursue banking, the military will welcome you with open arms.”

“You’re not going to explain what it was doing there?”

“What is there to explain? As you said, Avon - I’m not a tidy man.”

“No, it was there deliberately. Why?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Then it _was_ deliberate?” Avon pressed.

“Does it matter?” Blake said. “You’ve made it very clear that any time you spent with me was a mistake, and I can’t say I disagree with you.”

“It matters if you’ve spent the past two weeks masturbating into my property because I threw you out of my flat.”

“ _All right,_ ” Blake snapped. “Yes. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. Now is it my turn to throw _you_ out of _my_ flat?”

“I hope not,” Avon said, rising smoothly from the bed and grabbing hold of Blake’s tunic with both hands. In one fluid movement, he tugged Blake forward and ‘round. Blake was still too busy being angry and embarrassed to realise what was happening, so he didn't fight back until his centre of gravity had already shifted past the point of no return and he was already falling onto the bed on his back. Avon let himself fall too so that he landed on top of Blake, straddling him. He pushed his tongue deep into Blake’s mouth to stop him making any further objections.

He wanted Blake, even more than he had done this afternoon after weeks of abstinence. It was the idea of it - Blake imagining him, imagining fucking him or imagining the sound of his voice; Blake groaning into his pillow, his cock in his hand and his head and his heart fixed on the man he had lost. Blake, who could have gone to any of his other lovers, had been in some way faithful to Avon during their break up. Blake had been unsatisfied and miserable and had breathed in the lingering smell of Avon’s clothes as he’d jerked himself off in the darkness.

For a moment Avon thought Blake was going to push him away on principle, and then Blake relaxed underneath him, his hips pushing up against Avon and his tongue pushing back into Avon’s mouth. Even if Blake had his own version of common sense, it was clearly as helpless as Avon’s in this scenario. Avon groped for the opening of Blake’s trousers with sex-clumsy fingers and, finding it too difficult, abandoned Blake’s mouth and lowered himself down the bed until he was level with Blake’s groin.

He wanted desperately to be nice to Blake, even if Blake had deserved everything Avon had said and done to him since their fight in Avon’s flat. He wanted to make up for the harsh words and the rough awkward sex in his office earlier, where he hadn't been sure Blake wasn’t just taking advantage of the situation he’d presented. And he wanted Blake. Desperately. To some extent that he knew he was deluding himself, finding excuses for his actions, but he didn’t care.

Somehow he got Blake’s trousers open, and released his erection. Without wasting time admiring it or removing the rest of Blake’s clothes, Avon lowered his head, mouth open to receive Blake’s cock. It jumped as he closed his lips around it and slid down, pushing a hand into the open front of Blake’s trousers to grip the base of the shaft.

“You are… _the_ most contrary…man,” Blake told him as Avon slid his tongue luxuriantly around the cock in his mouth. Blake moaned as Avon let his teeth graze along the sensitive flesh and then soothed it again with his lips.

“I _really_ shouldn’t let you do this,” Blake gasped as his fingers closed in Avon’s hair and pushed him down further. “I really-”His hips pushed up rhythmically into Avon’s face, and Avon sucked him hard until Blake’s protestations had trailed over into wordless encouragement.

With the hand that wasn’t gripping Blake’s cock, he opened his own trousers and pushed them down over his erection. He toed off his shoes and then, when he’d run out of things he could do one-handed, he let go of Blake and pulled away from Blake’s hand on his hair. 

“I _knew_ -” Blake began, and then Avon had returned to the head of the bed and kissed him again to shut him up. Once again he felt the hard anger in Blake melt away into desire, Blake’s body moulding itself to his. Avon pushed the rest of his trousers down over his feet, trying to ignore the way Blake’s wet cock was now rubbing insistently against his thigh. He reached back for the drawer next to Blake’s bed where he knew Blake kept the lubricant, drew the tub out and pressed it into Blake’s hand.

“I want you to fuck me,” he told Blake harshly against his ear. In the weeks since their first night together, he had occasionally been the one to fuck Blake, rather than the other way around, but while it was incredible it wasn’t what he was looking for now. “Fuck my brains out,”he told Blake, shivering at the thought of it - of having Blake look at him again like he was the centre of the universe. “Make me scream for you-”

“ _Avon_ ,” Blake managed before Avon shoved his tongue back down Blake’s throat again. Another moment and Blake took control of the kiss from him, twisting and pressing Avon back into the mattress. That was more like the Blake he remembered.

Avon opened his legs in preparation and felt Blake’s damp finger press up against and then into him. Blake moved away from his mouth to get a better angle, and Avon pressed his head back into the bed as Blake pushed a second finger in beside the first and began fucking him with them. Distantly he heard himself begin to whimper. The sound grew louder when Blake bent and took the head of Avon’s cock briefly into his mouth, and again when Blake went up to three and then _four_ fingers inside his arse.

“Too much,” he told Blake, who was twisting his hand around to find the most sensitive spots. “Blake, it’s too big-”

“You wanted to scream,” Blake reminded him and twisted his hand back in the direction that it had come. Inside Avon, his fingers flexed, and Avon arched and cried out.

“ _Blake_!”

He tried to reach down for Blake’s hand, disappearing inside him, knuckle-deep, but before he’d made contact Blake had withdrawn carefully. Blake wiped his hand on the bedcovers as he returned to eye-level, positioning himself over Avon, who drew his legs up and out of the way with what was probably embarrassing eagerness.

“Ready?” Blake asked, but, before Avon had answered, Blake had already pushed into him,  splitting him open again.

Blake’s cock was longer than his fingers and hit Avon somewhere his fingers hadn’t been able to reach. It was getting difficult to think sensibly. It was so much better than sex on Avon's desk. Blake pulled back and slammed his hips forward again, and again and again, pounding into Avon with what felt like rage as well as desire. One of his hands was fastened on the headboard of the bed and the other around the back of Avon’s shoulder, his lips pressed into the pulse-point of Avon’s neck.

Avon heard himself say, “Blake.” His voice was cracking. “Blake - look at me. _Look_ at me-” He felt teeth against his shoulder, and then he felt Blake push himself up off the mattress, and then Blake was staring down at him with a mix of determination and helplessness in his eyes. Avon raised his head to kiss him and then dropped back down to the pillow as Blake increased the pace of his hips.

“God, I missed,” he began, wanting to say _you,_ as Blake had done earlier, but knowing it was a stupid idea.“ _This_ ,”Avon gasped as Blake’s cock pounded against his prostate. “God, I missed this.”

*

In the aftermath, he let himself doze off against Blake: a deliberate defence-mechanism to stop himself saying anything that would ruin it. At least, before he absolutely had to.

Blake smoothed his hair away from his face, pressed a kiss to one of his eyebrows, then the tip of his nose, and his lips, and then pulled away. Avon let him go, and relaxed down into the bed, listening to the sound of Blake pulling on his clothes. He let himself drift for a few moments, enjoying the feeling of being well-fucked for the first time in a fortnight, and woke alone to the sound of the television as coming from the next room.

Avon listened to it for a while, trying to work out what Blake was watching. It sounded like the late newscast, which (he checked his watch) probably meant tat Blake would come back to bed in ten minutes. Could he wait ten minutes? Yes. But did he want to?

He got up, pulling on the shirt that Blake had abused during his absence, and padded into the living room. Blake looked up as he entered, and made space of him at the other end of the sofa he’d been lying on, without actually sitting up. They let the news fill the silence for a while, and then Blake said,

“I tripped and fell.”

Avon rolled his eyes, and then looked away to disguise the fact that he’d started grinning. He looked back at Blake. “So did I.”

“On second thoughts, I think you pushed me.”

“Well, that’s up to the courts to decide,” Avon said. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not start arguing yet.”

“Sorry,” Blake said. “I didn’t realise you had a schedule.” He turned back to the television, which was showing live coverage of a new statue of the President being unveiled in Cameron Square.

Without looking back at Avon, he said, “If _you_ don’t mind, I’d be interested in what you think is going to happen next.”

“I’ll go home,” Avon said. “I’ll sleep, I’ll go back to work. I expect you’ll do much the same.”

“You know what I meant.”

 _Oh yes,_ Avon thought. He knew. And the answer, the real answer, was that if nothing changed he thought he would probably stay with Blake - until the pain of being with him overwhelmed any memory of the pain of _not_ being with him. At that point, Avon would leave again. Then the balance would swing back the other way. _Not_ being with Blake would seem to be more unbearable state of the two, and he would find himself crawling back on another flimsy excuse. If they were lucky and careful, they might have several good conversations and some memorable evenings before Avon felt the need to storm out again. At the moment it didn’t feel like they were being either.

“I said I didn’t want to start arguing yet,” Avon said. Blake’s foot had ended up near Avon’s hip, and he began idly rubbing it between his fingers and thumbs. “If you keep pressing that’s what’s going to happen. If you don’t, I might give you another blowjob in about twenty minutes.”

“Charming,” Blake said, trying to pull his foot away.

“That’s certainly what you’ll think when it starts,” Avon agreed.

Blake managed to yank his foot out of Avon’s hand, and Avon let him go rather than fight him for it. He turned his attention to the news, for something to do that wasn’t looking at or touching Blake. The presenter was still discussing the new statue, which was now up and in place and surrounded by a thick wall of black-clad guards. There was nobody else in shot - the Secretary of State had just finished giving a speech and had walked out of frame as Avon had arrived in the living room. The voiceover had continued, though - describing what they'd just witnessed, and elaborating on how popular the current President was. As a news story, it was impressively void of any content of any kind.

“I assume someone thought this section would be more interesting,” Avon said to change the subject.

“Hm?” Blake said.

“Explosions,” Avon said. “Screaming. High-profile arrests.” He nodded towards the screen. “Somebody thought this statue would upset our friends who took such a dislike to prototype thirteen. The authorities have wasted enough time on this report that they were probably reasonably certain something would happen."

"Hm," Blake grunted without much interest. He rubbed his lower lip with the edges of his fingers, suggesting he _was_ thinking about it, though - his attention caught by something else rather than the inevitable decline of his relationship. Sure enough, another moment passed and he said, "So you think the statue was a _trap_ , do you? That would have made the report more exciting, you're right."

"Not _built_ as a trap," Avon said, allowing his mind to wander absently through the possibilities. He wasn’t thinking about it seriously - it was just conversation to pass the time, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t extrapolate from available data. "Not _designed_ as a trap. But I expect someone saw a pattern in recent raids. Or someone on the inside _talked_ -“

The news item changed at last, rather sheepishly, to a pre-recorded section about water shortage, and what they could do to combat it.

"And at last they've realised nothing is going to happen tonight," Avon said. "I wonder why our friends changed their minds - fortunate for them, of course."

"Would you stop calling them _our friends_?" Blake said, sounding slightly hectic, though he tried to disguise it with incredulity. He seemed fearless and reckless most of the time. Avon had never heard him sound afraid. But of course, Blake was only human. Like anyone else, he was worried someone might be listening in and labelling him a terrorist, just because he hadn't disagreed with Avon's flippant statement. He was worried someone might be listening in, even in his own flat. Perhaps a bit extreme, but not unreasonable.

“Presumably the terrorists discovered the mole, or they discovered a brain between them and decided to do something else with the evening," Avon said thoughtfully, changing his language to suit Blake.

"It’s not _that_ many troopers,” Blake protested.

This wasn’t a complete non sequitur, but Avon was used to following Blake’s train of thought and he’d lost this one somewhere. He grimaced. “What?”

"Never mind," Blake said. And then apparently unable to stop himself getting into an argument whatever it was about, he said, "I just meant that assuming their aim is to blow things up then this _isn't_ a bad target. It wouldn't hurt anyone, it's not _useful,_ and as a symbol-"

"The symbolism is the problem," Avon told him. "At the moment that statue symbolises a colossal waste of money and resources. It’s an eyesore. Almost everyone looking at it in the weeks and months to come will think about how much they'd prefer it _not_ to be there. But if it's destroyed? Well now, they'll probably get annoyed that the road is blocked, and support more money being funnelled into the military."

"Mm," Blake said. "And if the terrorists also planned to kidnap the Secretary? That ispossible, I think.”

“If they did, I suppose they might get some information,” Avon said. “Assuming he knows anything worth telling, and hasn’t been trained to withhold it, and he probably has. They’d do better to recruit any halfway-decent technician and smuggle him into a command base.”

“Interesting idea,” Blake said. He said it lightly, as though they were still joking, but his eyes had fixed on Avon. He looked as though he were taking it seriously - the suggestion that a halfway-decent technician might be helping the rebellion. The logical deduction, the deduction Blake must have leapt to, was that this technician could easily be Avon himself. Did he think Avon had just confessed that he was a terrorist?

How stupid, Avon thought as he got to his feet and walked over to switch off the television to get away from Blake’s gaze. You couldn’t arrest an Alpha without proof or a confession, but if you _did_ have either - well, then, it was your duty to do it and do it quickly. This particular matter had been a joke, an intellectual problem, conversation to pass the time. Avon could point this out to the men who came to arrest him, of course. And of course, there would be no evidence at all to link him to the bombing of the statue, which in any case hadn't even happened. But if they dug around in his brain they’d find the teleport sabotage. And if they looked further back, they’d find the crimes he’d committed in his youth with Tynus and Lydia, and his plans for the bank fraud.

He flicked the television off. “Purely hypothetical of course.” That should be enough of a denial to counteract any confession Blake thought he might have made, but he couldn’t get his pulse under control.

”Speaking of our friends-” Blake said.

“Don’t call them _our_ friends,” Avon snapped, swinging back round.

“-are you still working on prototype thirteen?” Blake finished.

Avon stared at him for a moment, wondering as he had done before whether Blake could literally read his thoughts.

No, that was obviously and patently ridiculous. It was just that he, Avon, was just giving himself away at every turn.

”Well, we all are," Avon told him, keeping his voice calm. "In the sense that prototype fourteen builds on previous work.”

Blake shook his head. “Sorry, let me rephrase.” He got to his feet. “What I meant was, have you rebuilt prototype thirteen in your flat? And if you _have_ , would you like some help making it work?”

There was nothing illegal in working outside of office hours, Avon reminded himself. Even if he was working on something he hadn’t told the Project board about. He forced himself to stay calm and collected.

“Is this an offer?”

Blake shrugged. “I thought I might help you carry your coffee machine back. If, once we got to your flat, you needed some engineering work done-?“

Avon considered this. He rested his hands against Blake’s chest as Blake leaned into him.

“I don’t think you’re a terrorist,” Blake said against his ear, voice low. “And I’m not trying to recruit you either.” Avon quirked an eyebrow at him - that alternative hadn’t even occurred to him, though he could see why Blake might have thought he was worried about that. “I _am_ very good at keeping secrets, though,”Blake finished.

“The coffee machine can stay here,” Avon told him. Blake looked at him quizzically, and Avon shook his head. “I have another one at my flat. It’s not working at the moment, but I assume you can fix it after you’re done with the teleport.”

“Get dressed,” Blake said with a smile. “We’ll go as soon as you’re ready.”

*

It took another two weeks until a fifteenth prototype was ready to be switched on. Avon hadn’t fired Rabson, though he thought plenty of people (including the man himself) had expected him to. He admitted to himself that he might well have done it at another time, when he was feeling more vengeful than sensible, but he was seeing Blake again regularly - drugging himself docile with sex and intelligent conversation. The Project needed good people. Good people who had made mistakes and were now in fear for their jobs would be less likely to make further mistakes. That said, Avon made sure he double-checked everything properly before permission was given for go-live. And he spoke to Hunt and ensured that Blake was not the one assigned to turn anything on for the first time. Simmons pressed the button, and was the one to witness absolutely nothing happening.

Back in Avon's flat, the work he and Blake were doing on what had been prototype thirteen was progressing well. They’d already managed to replicate the condition it had been in before the explosion, and were rapidly moving towards a state where an object put into the primary station was _more_ likely to disappear and reappear in the second station than it was not to. Avon knew they could have done considerably better than that, too - _if_ they had both been better about not distracting each other, and if Blake hadn’t failed to turn up _twice_ without explanation. On both occasions he’d been very apologetic afterwards, though. Avon was trying to think of as an improvement. He didn’t want to throw Blake out yet. In fact, he didn't want to throw Blake out at all. But it was as inevitable as Avon taking him back almost immediately afterwards. Or at least, Avon thought it was.

*

“Oh - and I saw my career-realignment officer yesterday,” Blake said one day as he tightened the linkages between components in Avon's teleport prototype. He said it casually as though it was just another piece of news about his life: I went to work, I did the laundry, oh - and I discussed a major life-altering event with someone and forgot to tell you about it.

Avon had been running a de-bug of the primary mainframe. He was seated at his desk, laptop in front of him, while Blake was sitting on the floor surrounded by bits of teleport. He knew he should try and respond casually, but his head had already twisted towards Blake before he could stop it. His fingers had stilled at the keyboard. Blake wasn’t looking at him, which meant he knew what it was he’d just said. Well, he could hardly not have done.

Avon turned back to his computer screen. He pressed his lips together to stop them from trembling, and then realised he would have to think of a response.

“And?” he said. Perhaps he should have left it at that - cool, uncaring. He probably should have left it at that, but Blake didn't answer immediately, and Avon heard himself asking, “How long exactly?”

“Until they move me on?” Blake said. “About a week. Less one day.”

Six days. That was all he had left - assuming Blake didn’t leave early to get established in his new position. Avon felt completely unprepared, but he also knew he should have known. That was the worst part, except for the yawning emptiness in his stomach and the way his throat was closing up. He could have predicted this, and he hadn’t, and it made him feel even more idiotic for letting Blake get this close to him.

Alphas and Betas were moved from job to job every twelve months. The theory was that they  could gain new experiences and new contacts in each placement and ultimately emerge as a more useful member of society. Mostly, it seemed to work, though they were obvious downsides, most obviously the constant relocation and the need for continual handover periods.

He and Blake had even discussed Avon’s next posting - the one Mart had promised him before his assignment on the Aquitar Project. Blake had said at the time of this discussion that he wasn’t particularly interested in banking. When Avon had asked what he _was_ interested in, Blake had shrugged and claimed he would go wherever he was put - a most un-Blake-like sentiment, but one that seemed (astonishingly) to be true. Avon had badgered him about it for days, sure he would be able to get a real answer eventually, but Blake genuinely seemed to have no career aspirations of any kind. All he’d said was that there were some things that were more important than work or financial gain, which Avon had assumed was just a disgustingly soppy statement. Only an idiot would have been pleased or flattered by that sort of thing, and so he’d had to change the subject.

At no point had he asked when Blake’s placement at the Aquitar Project was due to expire. It occurred to him now that he must have been protecting himself. He wouldn’t have wanted to know the date of his own death, either.

“Where?” he asked. It _was_ possible he was overreacting. Blake _could_ have been moved somewhere within London Dome, somewhere they could still see each other, if they wanted to.

“Mars Colony Five,” Blake said.

“Mars,” Avon said.  He closed his eyes and tried to think logically. _Logically,_ this was better. Rather than cycling in and out of a relationship, they could just make it a clean break. If he didn't have to look at Blake every day and be reminded of Blake’s existence then he wouldn't want him.

“Well, then,” he said, turning in his seat to regard Blake with bland disinterest, "I assume this is goodbye. Thank you, Blake, it's been," he paused slightly and eventually decided on, "educational."

"Actually it doesn't haveto be," Blake said.

"Educational?"

"No. It doesn’t have to be goodbye," Blake said. "Not if you don't want it to be, anyway.” He pushed himself to his feet and crossed towards Avon. “I…well, I have something for you.”The devastating news has already been delivered, but it was only now that he sounded even slightly nervous.

He removed something from the one of the trouser pockets and reached past Avon to place the object on the desk in front of Avon. Whatever it was made a clicking sound as he put it down, the hard metal meeting the hard plastic top of the desk. He lifted his hand away.

Avon stared at the ring. It was a plain gold band - not ostentatious, but not inexpensive either. More Blake's sort of thing, really, than his, but not wrong either. It would, Avon thought, still be warm from resting against Blake's leg. Blake must have carried it around all day, waiting for this moment when he would put it in front of Avon and wait for his reaction. And for a moment, Avon wanted to take it. No matter that splitting up was for the best, he knew he didn't want to lose Blake. No matter that he knew he shouldn't be involved in a relationship, he knew that what he wanted - well, what he wanted was Blake. For all the good it would do him.

He looked back at the man himself, who was now leaning against the wall and watching him steadily.

"Are you _insane_?” Avon asked flatly.

"For wanting to marry you?" Blake said. "Possibly."

Involuntarily Avon's eyes flicked back to the ring. Marriage _would_ keep them together, it was true. As much as the Administration prided itself on regular career realignment, it was also strongly focused on family values. Formalised couples would be rotated into new professions in the same area, so they could continue to be together and raise the next generation of Federation citizens. The only exception was Space Command, which sent its officers to posts across the galaxy, but most SC officers seemed to feel their primary loyalty was to the service and few of them formed serious attachments outside of it.

What Blake was offering therefore was not only a chance to be shackled to him until a justice computer declared they had the right to live apart and Avon had the right to most of their possessions. Avon would also have to leave the Aquitar Project in less than a week, leave his flat, leave his chances (widely publicised, unlike Blake's imminent departure) of joining the Central bank.

"You're not serious," Avon said.

"I am completely serious," Blake said. "Do you accept?"

"Accept an offer of formalised commitment from a man who isn't currently faithful to me for whole evenings at a time? Hm, let me think about it."

“Of course, you _can_ think about it," Blake said magnanimously.

"I don't need to think about it,” Avon said, shutting down his more irrational thoughts and clamping down on his emotions. “I refuse. I have no idea why you even offered."

Blake made an incredulous noise, his face creasing with disdain. Avon cut him off before he could speak.

"If you're going to claim you're in love with me, then you should know I don't believe you. And if I did believe you, I'd tell you I don't want _love_ as you define it. It's free-range where it should be exclusive."

“I _am_ in love with you,” Blake told him.

“Irrelevant,” Avon said, though it wasn’t. Oh, it wasn’t,

“Exclusively. Overwhelmingly-”

“No. You're not capable of that."

Blake made a face. ”You're a clever man, Avon. Brilliant, even. Haven’t you realised yet that I haven't so much as _looked_ at another man since I met you? Let alone slept with any of them.”

"You're lying,” Avon said instinctively.

Blake hesitated, then Avon saw resolve harden his features. Blake’s eyes met his. ”No,” Blake said levelly. ”I’m not.”He reached out to put a hand of Avon's shoulder and Avon jerked away.

“ _Avon_ ,” Blake said imploringly and Avon pushed his chair back and got up in case Blake tried that again. He paced away, reached the teleport prototype and swung back towards Blake.

“If you haven’t been sleeping around, then you've been lying to me since we met.”

"Once," Blake said with a grimace. "You caught me immediately. After that - no. I haven't lied to you. I just... didn't correct your misapprehension. And I know that isn’t better- I don’t excuse my behaviour-”

“But _I_ should?” Avon said sarcastically.

“I knew I should have done this the other way round,” Blake muttered. He rubbed his eyes. “Avon, I do _want_ you to know the truth. I just…well, I can’t tell you. That _is_ ,”he corrected himself as Avon’s eyes narrowed, “I can’t tell you _here_. Wrong atmosphere.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It occurs to me, Avon,” Blake said, as though he hadn’t really heard, “that I’ve gone about this proposal in entirely the wrong way. Would you care for dinner?”

Avon opened his mouth to refuse, or to demand Blake stop making excuses and tell him what the hell was going on, but Blake’s face was very serious. His large brown eyes held Avon’s - and silently he mouthed the words, _Trust me_.

Avon raised an eyebrow. Only a fool would trust Blake after everything he’d done, after Blake had just admitted that so much of what Avon knew of him was a lie. Did Blake think he was a fool? He must do, in some way. But then, Avon thought ruefully, if Blake _did_ think that he was probably right. Who else but a fool would have let Blake wrap around his life so thoroughly that Avon had genuinely considered leaving everything he’d worked for, even if he’d only considered it for a moment? Who else would have taken Blake back after he’d done so little to redeem himself? Who else would be listening to his excuses now, just because Blake claimed to be in love with him?

“Please,” Blake said softly.

He wanted to find out what Blake had been hiding for all these months. This was the path of least resistance.

 _“_ Why not?” Avon said.

*

He thought at first that they were headed back towards the Aquitar Project (Blake’s idea of a romantic dinner for two perhaps taking the form of a short stop in the Project cafeteria) but then Blake veered off in the direction of the restaurant he’d taken Avon to on the first night.

“You’re aware that there _are_ other eating establishments in the Dome,” Avon commented as they rounded the corner.

“Yes. None with _quite_ the same ambiance,” Blake said. “Besides, the food is really rather-”

He stopped suddenly and swore. Avon had been looking at him, and now he glanced in the direction Blake had been looking in.

There were black-clad troopers standing outside the restaurant. A large number of them, and they were all armed.

“Turn around,” Blake said quietly, taking hold of Avon’s elbow, “and walk slowly back the way we came.”

They were here for Blake, Avon realised. Or at least - Blake thought they were. Ten troopers to arrest a single unambitious engineer on his way to dinner. It had to be a mistake, but Blake (despite his own words of warning) was walking faster and faster.

”Blake,” Avon said as calmly as he could, “what the hell is going on?”

“I’ll tell you if we survive this,”Blake said. His hand tightened on Avon’s arm as more troopers appeared at the other end of the street. “Do you want to run for it?”

“What?”

“I agree,” Blake said. “ _Run.”_ He tried to tug Avon off towards a side road, but Avon wrenched himself free and turned back, only to be engulfed by the second group of troopers. They were all faceless behind black gas-masks, and for a moment Avon felt as though the air was thin and he would suffocate. His heart was hammering with fear and anger. He held his hands up in surrender. Somewhere behind the wall of troopers, Blake shouted Avon’s name, and then he was cut off by the sound of further struggle, unfamiliar voices shouting at him to stand down.

“There’s been a mistake,” Avon told them as his arms were seized and forced behind his back.

“No mistake, Doctor Avon,” the trooper told him as he tightened the cuffs around Avon’s wrists. “You should choose your friends more carefully. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

He gave Avon a push in the small of his back with what was undoubtedly a live rifle, and Avon found himself being escorted to the waiting transportation van. For a moment, they left the door open. For a moment, Avon thought Blake was going to be thrown in next to him, and he’d have a chance to extract some information about what the hell was going on out of the one person who seemed to know - then the troopers slammed the door shut, leaving Avon alone in the dark.


	6. Chapter 6

All the questions were about Blake. When had Avon met him? What did they talk about? How often did they see each other? What did they do together? What did Avon think Blake did when they were apart? Had Avon ever seen Blake acting strangely?

“Define _strange_ ,” Avon might have said at a different time and in a different place. Here, he was fairly surely he would be beaten for cheek or obstruction, if they didn’t just pull the information from his brain and get him on a hundred other charges at the same time.

 _Yes_ , he told them. He’d seen Blake acting strangely on a number of occasions. Blake had left halfway through the evening sometimes without much explanation, Blake had broken his arm once in a laboratory sabotage, Blake had received visits from strange men late in the night. Hadn’t Avon thought it was worth mentioning these events to the authorities? No, Avon told them. Each one had seemed reasonable at the time, or if not reasonable - at least within the boundaries of what he’d come to expect from Blake’s dissolute lifestyle. Now, of course, he realised his mistake. He should have reported Blake weeks ago, months ago - no matter that Blake was an Alpha and hadn’t done anything obviously wrong. Avon saw now that reporting Blake had been the only rational thing to do. He’d been confused by his desire for Blake, he’d been a fool. The lie detector he was hooked up to maintained its steady line throughout all of this, indicating that, as far as it was concerned, Avon was telling the truth.

Every self-protecting word felt like a betrayal, even though Avon knew Blake must deserve it if he was here, and even though Avon could see what he was telling his interrogators wasn’t a surprise. At one point he was given a transcript of a conversation he’d had with Blake in bed, his own bed, and asked to comment on it. He did not ask where the listening devices had been, or why, though he wanted to know more than he’d wanted to know who Bail was.

He told them about Bail, of course, though not Blake’s meeting with Bran Foster, as that at least wasn’t suspicious. He told them about Fell Reeve, who had become a friend, and about the lovely Leon - and hated himself for it. But none of it was a surprise. They nodded and wrote it down and asked more questions that they already knew the answers to.

When had Avon last seen Blake before today? Had he had any idea that Blake’s placement was expiring in six days? Had he expected the proposal? How did he actually _feel_ about Blake?

It was in Avon’s mind to say, “I used him for sexual gratification and technical expertise, and he wasn’t that good at either.”

Perhaps it would be even better to say, “He was pleasant company, but I didn’t know him well. I’m appalled at the idea I could have associated with a law-breaker, even accidentally.”

He wasn’t sure he could manage it, though. “I feel nothing for Blake” was safer, easier - but to these people who knew everything it would sound like the lie it was. And he couldn’t bear the lie detector to catch him out on this question after everything he’d already told them.

“I don’t know,” Avon said wearily. “I expect I hate him.”

They left him alone. The period of inactivity could have been minutes, hours, or days. The door to the room that Avon had been shut in disappeared invisibly into the wall, as though it had never been there. They’d wheeled the lie detector out into the corridor, presumably so he wouldn’t try and damage it. That meant the room was empty and featureless, apart from the narrow bunk that Avon was sitting on. There was nothing for his attention to catch on, there was just whiteness. This sort of sensory deprivation had probably been designed to drive prisoners mad if left long enough.

He shut his eyes and tried to steady himself. Perhaps, he thought absently, they would allow him to see Blake if he continued behaving himself.

This thought was so pathetic that he was almost glad when the interrogators returned. There were two of them - an older man and a middle-aged woman, both dressed in Alpha tabards. They were accompanied by a trooper, of course, in case he decided to try and fight his way out, but this time both the man and the woman looked more kindly on Avon. It was almost as though while they’d been out of the room they’d decided they’d been too hard on him before. He was a gullible idiot, but not a bad person. They knew he didn’t want to betray the Federation really.

This time, Avon thought, they wanted something from him.

The woman sat down next to him on the bunk. She had a buff folder in her hands and she opened it, displaying a batch of glossy A4 photographs.

“Do you know who this is, Doctor Avon?” she asked, handing him the upper-most photo.

Ah, Avon thought. So his title was back, was it? They must really want his cooperation.

He looked down at the photograph. It depicted a young woman with long dark hair and large eyes. Alpha, if Avon was any judge, but otherwise not someone he could immediately place. Not someone he’d seen at the Project, or in his apartment building, or Blake’s for that matter. The photograph was a head-on portrait shot, possibly the one from her identity papers because she wasn’t smiling.

“Should I?” he asked, trying to hand it back.

“I don’t know, doctor,” the man said. “You tell us.”

The female interrogator gave him another photograph - the same woman, but seated on a park bench with Blake, who was leaning towards her. She seemed to be pregnant. Another photograph showed her in university robes next to Blake, who was dressed similarly. Another showed her on her own again, standing in a kitchen, her hair tied up in a loose bun.

“Her name was Lana _Blake_ ,” the female interrogator explained, emphasising the final word to make sure Avon caught it, not that he could have missed it. He glanced up at her anyway, and then back at the upper-most photograph. If this was Blake’s sister then they seemed to share few genes.

But if she wasn’t his sister, then who was she? A cousin, perhaps. Now he thought about it, he dimly recalled Blake mentioning a young cousin who lived on a penal colony. Her name could have been Lana, Avon supposed, though it didn’t feel quite right. And the pictures definitely weren’t of the cold, barren place Blake had described.

“Lana was Roj Blake’s wife,” the female interrogator explained. “Did you know he was married?”

“I’m sorry, I must have misheard you,” Avon said blankly. “I thought you said-”

“Roj and Lana Blake were married almost six years ago,” the male interrogator told him. “Next week would have been their anniversary. She was a nutrition analyst.”

“Blake…is gay,” Avon told them. "He's not bisexual, he's gay."

The man and the woman exchanged looks. “Yes,” the woman said. “We know. Lana, on the other hand, seems to have been kept in ignorance. Neither you nor she seem to have been aware of the other’s existence.”

Avon wondered absently which of them it was who had had to go through the tapes from his flat and Blake’s, or whether they’d farmed that work out to an underling. Who was it who had heard him begging Blake to fuck him until he screamed? Not that it mattered really. He would have cared this morning, but he was beginning to think that nothing he’d thought mattered this morning actually did.

“We’re not sure why he originally married her,” the woman continued. “Perhaps he hadn’t yet realised what his preferences were, but we do know that he stayed with her because her father threatened him with deportation to one of the outer colonies if he filed for divorce. Lana’s father was Senator Wulf Peters - Head of the Bureau of Alteration. A very powerful man.”

“I know who he is,” Avon said blankly.

“Then you can imagine the difficulty of Roj’s situation,” the man said. “You can imagine what made him so desperate.”

The woman handed Avon another photograph. Avon glanced down at it, and then quickly away. The photograph had shown the same woman from the other four shots, but this time she was clearly dead. Avon had seen pictures of corpses before, but they’d all died sterile deaths. Lana’s throat had been torn out with something that had seared her flesh as it cut - a laser probe, probably. The kind of tool he and Blake worked with every day. Her face was pale with blood loss, and her eyes were open in surprise.

He’d known it was coming. The interrogators had talked about Blake’s wife in the past tense all the way through the conversation, but he hadn’t expected- He hadn’t _thought_ it would look like this.

“She was murdered yesterday evening,” the man said. “Can you tell us again, Doctor Avon, where Roj Blake was yesterday between six and eight pm?”

“With his career realignment officer,” Avon said, knowing as the words passed his lips that it was futile. They’d already asked him this question earlier and already knew the answer. It must have already failed to stand-up as an alibi.

The man shook his head. “He _did_ have an appointment last week. There he was told he was going to be shipped out to Mars Colony Five. Imagine how he must have felt - knowing that after all those years married to Lana, he still hadn’t been able to stop his extradition from London Dome.”

“But,” the woman said, “what if he was married to someone else? Someone else whose connections were almost as good as Lana’s, someone else who had no interest in going to Mars either-”

“All right,” Avon said softly. “I understand.” They must think he was so stupid. He looked up at the man and the trooper. “Are you charging me with anything?”

“Of course not,” the female interrogator said with almost motherly outrage. “You are a victim here, just as much as poor Lana.”

 _Not quite as much,_ Avon thought wryly, remembering the tear in the dead-woman’s throat.

“But we _will_ keep you under close surveillance,” the male interrogator said. “And I wouldn’t advise you to attempt to leave the Dome for the next six months, Doctor Avon.”

“Otherwise you’re free to go,” the female interrogator said.

The trooper stepped out of the way of the door, which reappeared in the wall and slid open. Avon handed the photographs to the woman without looking at them, and stood up.

“Thank you for your co-operation,” she said as he left and the door slid closed again.

*

Avon’s flat looked just as he’d left it. Bits of teleport were still arranged on the floor as though Blake was going to come back and tidy them away after dinner. The ring Blake had offered him was still sitting on the desk next to Avon’s computer.

There was only one change to suggest the massive upheaval Avon’s life had undergone in the last four hours - a note propped up against his laptop. It read:

_The Administration is pleased to see your dedication to the teleportation project, Doctor Avon, but would welcome more visibility of the work you are doing. We are also keen for our citizens maintain a healthy work-life balance. You are advised to take tomorrow off as compassionate leave, due to the distressing events of the weekend. A collection van will arrive in the afternoon to transport your equipment back to  Aquitar Project HQ, where you may continue to work on it within your contracted hours._

So, Avon thought as he crumpled the note, that was the end of that, too. Just when the teleport was ready for live testing.

Not that he could think, right now, of anything he wanted to buy. The money should have bought him safety, but the events of today had proved that there was no such thing as safety. No matter how rich and well connected you were, you would still end up in a room without doors, or with your throat cut, or in a transportation cell on the way to a penal colony, or under close surveillance for the rest of your life, every move you made carefully documented for use in a trial you might one day attend from the wrong side of the dock.

They were listening to him right now, he knew, but again he couldn’t bring himself to care. What did it matter if somebody listened in to the sound of his ragged breathing? What would they deduce? That he was upset? Naturally. It was only _natural_ to be upset when you discovered that man you were in love with had been married to someone else. Particularly if he had then murdered their spouse in order to use you more effectively.

 _I am in love with Blake,_ Avon thought to himself with wry amusement. _What a fine time to discover it._

The communicator mounted on his desk made a buzzing sound and without thinking Avon walked over and activated it.

“Avon,” a familiar voice said, “it’s me, Blake. Please don’t hang up.”

Without thinking, Avon cut the connection. They must have allowed Blake one call, and he’d chosen to call here. Someone must have told him that Avon had been released. Perhaps they’d even encouraged him to call Avon to find out what Avon would do, whether he’d be stupid enough to engage in conversation.

The sound of Blake’s voice seemed to hang in the air, making it difficult to move. Avon forced himself to sit in the desk chair and turned on the computer. They’d be tracking this as well, but he wasn’t doing anything unexpected. He searched for Lana Peters. A list of her known addresses ticked down the screen, along with her grading records, records of her marriage to Roj Nathaniel Blake, and her death - cause of death: murder, assailant: unknown. Blake, of course, was regarded as innocent until the justice machine pronounced otherwise, although it would. It was just a matter of time.

He called up Blake’s details as well, although he was fairly sure he’d already memorised them all weeks ago. Sure enough, all of Blake’s addresses were in roughly the same areas as Lana’s - some of the earlier ones were exactly identical. It was not usual for a married couple to have lived apart for the last three years, but it was possible that they might receive dispensation to do so, if they could afford to maintain two properties.

The whole situation was quite plausible. Blake could have been going to see a wife when he'd claimed he was visiting other men. And it wasn't unlikely that he'd lied about the specific time he'd seen his CRO. And the photographs _had_ looked real -

But, the nagging voice in Avon’s head said, though real, they were also strange choices to show Blake's life with this woman. Where was the official photograph of their wedding? Surely _that_ would have been anyone’s first choice, rather than a blurry shot from a park. Meanwhile, the murder weapon was too obvious and too brutal to be Blake's choice in what must have been a planned murder.

The evidence would show that it was, though. The laser probe would be found and Blake's fingerprints would be all over it. Blake's records hadn't been altered in the time Avon had known him. As for Lana Peters? Well, even if he could prove that _her_ details had been altered, her father would presumably claim it was the _earlier_ versions had been erroneous. And Blake had been acting guilty for months - Avon's own testimony would back that up.

He knew he should try and believe it. He should go back to work, get on with his life, and let Blake be deported for murder.

Avon picked up the ring and turned it over in his hands. He let it slip, for a moment, over the tip of the fourth finger of his right hand, and then tipped it off and slammed it back down on the desk top, his palm over it.

How was it, he thought bitterly, that he found it all too easy to believe that Blake was in love with him? Why had he trusted Blake enough to let Blake walk him to the restaurant where they’d been arrested? Avon knew he’d been fighting his own instincts as much as he'd been fighting Blake since the day he and Blake had first met. If he was that credulous, if he could believe Blake without any discernible evidence, why couldn't he believe what the authorities could prove must have happened?

Presumably, Avon thought, it was because he wanted to believe one and not the other.

Presumably it was because he wanted to believe Blake.

Avon drummed his fingers against the desk top over the ring Blake had given him, and tried to work out what to do.

*

Ral Melia was an arbiter-colonel in the Justice Department. He was also Avon’s older brother - half brother, anyway, which they both used as an excuse for not calling each other very often.

“I hear you’re wanted for murder,” Melia said when he finally deigned to answer his comm channel.

“Yes,” Avon said. “That must be why I’m hiding out in my flat where they won’t think to look for me.”

“And they call you a genius. How was prison?”

“So good that I want to go back almost immediately,” Avon told him. “And you, Melia, are going to take me there. This morning, as a matter of fact.”

Melia’s face assumed an irritating expression of amused condescension. “Is that so?”

“Well, of course you are,” Avon said. “You’re curious. Blake and I are all over the news. You must already have been asked what he’s like by at least five of your colleagues, and you have no idea. You need an excuse to go down there and see him, and I need a legal representative with me before I can tell Blake what I think of him. They’re probably going to brainwash or deport him soon, hence my need to move quickly.”

“And what _do_ you think of him? Just so I’m prepared.”

“He humiliated, used and endangered me,” Avon said flatly. “What do you think I think about him?”

Melia laughed, a light bark that Avon knew was very similar to his own. Odd that that sort of thing was shared when they looked relatively little alike. The same nose, but otherwise Melia’s features and light hair were those of his own father while Avon took after their mother.

“All right, Avon. I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

“I knew I could count on you,” Avon said and cut the connection.

*

They got in relatively easily. Avon supposed that, as with the call from Blake the previous night, someone was interested in what he might say and was willing to let it happen. Avon himself wasn't sure what he would say - or what Blake would say to him, knowing they were both being watched. He was, however, certain that whatever Blake had been going to say to him at the restaurant it was _not_ that he had just murdered his wife and wanted Avon to delight in his good fortune. There was another explanation, and if nothing else Avon wanted to know what it was, since whatever it was had probably ruined his life. If nothing else, he wanted to see Blake again - and for once he knew where Blake would be. If nothing else, he wanted to give back the ring.

Eight hours ago, Avon had emerged from the detention centres, tired and drawn and dirty after a relatively short stay. Blake had been incarcerated for almost a day, locked in a white room barely longer than the bunk he had presumably slept on the night before. Where Avon's cell had had four solid walls, one of Blake's was clear plexiglass so that those who wished to speak with him could do so safely from the other side, without fear that he might turn violent.

Blake certainly looked as though he might break into a murderous rage at any moment. He wasn’t pacing, but he looked as though he should probably start - his body was tight with tension. He surged to his feet as Avon entered and crossed to the ‘glass wall, his hands splayed either side of him, as though he could push his way through and out. For a moment, though, he almost smiled.

“So - you didn’t give up on me after all. I have to say I’m surprised.”

Avon raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think I haven’t given up on you?”

He kept his hands behind his back to stop himself leaning forward too, putting his hands against Blake’s on the other side of the ‘glass. They would be watching him - cameras were everywhere, and Melia was standing an almost tactful distance behind him, also watching.

What they’d see instead of an impassioned reunion was Blake’s expression changing from something hopeful to one of despair and then determination.

“Why _are_ you here then?”

“I wanted to see you,” Avon told him, putting a sneer in his voice. “I wanted you to see me on the other side of this glass, and I want to know why you did it.”

Blake slammed his hands against the glass, and Avon barely managed to stop himself stepping backwards.

“I didn’t murder _anyone_ ,” Blake said quietly. “You have to believe me. I was at university with her - I haven’t seen her in ten years-”

“There are photographs that suggest otherwise,” Melia pointed out helpfully. “And eye witness reports.”

“One photograph, I’ve seen it.” Blake prowled to the other side of the cell so he could more effectively glare at Melia. “ And testimony that isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Who are you anyway?”

“My legal counsel,” Avon said before Melia could link the two them together in another way. “I didn’t want to see you alone. It’s too upsetting.”

He said it flatly to mask the fact that it was true - so that it would be insulting in its lack of sincerity, but would show up in any official transcripts as genuine distress. Strangely, though, he did feel more comfortable with Melia’s presence. It gave him someone obvious to pretend to, rather than just Blake, who had almost always seen through him.

“Oh, well, I’m very sorry for you, Avon,” Blake said. “How do you think _I_ feel?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care either,” Avon said. “And you still haven’t answered my question - _Why_ , Blake?”

“I can’t answer it, because I have nothing to explain. I’m not married. I have never _been_ married, and certainly not to a woman. I’m _gay_ -”

“That’s not what I meant,” Avon said, cutting him off. It made no sense to let Blake tell him what he already knew. “Why _me?_ Why did you use _me_?”

“I can’t answer that either, for the same reason,” Blake said. “I have never used you. I fell in love with you. I wanted to marry _you,_ though at the moment I can hardly remember why.”

Avon stared at him for a moment - _he_ knew he was pretending, but Blake didn’t, and presumably wasn’t pretending himself. Blake was quick to anger, and not quick to forgive. This might be the last time they spoke to each other. That meant it would be the way they would remember each other, assuming either of them lived long enough to remember anything.

“I must look like an easy target,” Avon said when he could speak again without his voice shaking. “I must look _gullible_. Clearly I must change or be used again, so tell me, Blake - why me?”

“Your mouth,” Blake said, “at first. Then your attitude - your refusal to let me have my own way, even as you were undressing me with your eyes.”

“If you can’t answer the question properly, then we’re done here,” Avon said.

“Next, I found myself enjoying your sense of humour, your experience, your intelligence-”

“I said, that’s enough,” Avon said.

“But I think I only really knew I was lost, the day you supervised the tests on prototype thirteen-”

“That’s _enough_ , Blake,” Avon snapped. His heart was hammering in his chest - whether out of fear of discovery or as a result of what Blake was saying he couldn’t be sure. It was dangerous either way.

“ _You_ wanted to talk, Avon,” Blake said almost genially. He sighed, his fingers clenching against the glass. “I have never thought you were gullible. Arrogant, irritating and, on occasion, closed minded, yes, but not gullible. Until now. There are so many holes in this story I could use it as a sieve.”

“I can only think of one reason to distrust the evidence,” Avon said. “That would be - my trust in you. Fortunately, I don’t have any, so I’m not in danger of handing you a new kitchen implement or another weapon to use against me. Last night-”

“Last night I said I’d been keeping things from you, I know.”

“And?”

“This isn’t what I was keeping from you.”

“Then what was it?”

Blake’s face took on a pleading expression - _please believe me without me telling you anything. Trust me again and again and again without any proof._

Avon grimaced in return. Why had he ever thought this occasion would be different? Even now when it really mattered, Blake still couldn’t so much as hint at the truth. He wanted Avon’s trust, but gave nothing in return. That meant it was all pointless.

“You can see why I find it all so unconvincing,” Avon said flatly. He turned to go.

“It was nice meeting you,” Melia said cheerfully to Blake, who ignored him but raised his voice to make sure it would carry to the doorway.

“Avon, I’m sorry I hurt you. You were right - he was too old for me.”

Avon paused, his body half turned back towards the cell where Blake was contained. “I know I was right,” he said eventually as his brain whirled.

Too old - Bran Foster, the restaurant that Blake had tried to take him to last night. It wasn’t _much,_ but it was a start. It was the first link in the chain. Perhaps he could do something with the name _Bran Foster._

“Goodbye Blake,” he said coldly for the microphones and the silent watchers, and because he wasn’t sure they would ever meet again.

*

“So,” Melia said, stirring his coffee one final time before removing the spoon with a flourish, “did you get what you wanted from him?”

“Frequently,” Avon said without thinking about it. He smiled slightly, his mind producing an image of Blake sitting in front of a laptop and two mugs of hot tea, in response to the coffee he was drinking now.

They’d stopped in a cafe at Avon’s request. Melia should have returned to work and, in other circumstances, would have insisted on it, but he was being remarkably accommodating today. Presumably because he suspected something other than the obvious was going on, rather than because he’d noticed his brother needed support, but you could never tell with Melia. He  _was_ annoyingly observant though, and Avon wasn't exactly being discrete. He shook himself, and turned his reminiscent smile into a wry one. 

“Not this time. But what did I expect?”

“I don’t know,” Melia said thoughtfully. “But it was fascinating watching it, whatever it was.”

“Closure, I assume.”

“That must be it,” Melia agreed.

"Mm," Avon said. He  let his eyes flick round the room to locate the man and the woman who had followed them into the cafe. They weren’t sitting together and neither of them were actively looking in Avon’s direction. Both of them were wearing civilian clothes, but they were Space Command, he was sure of it.

“Of course, it’ll be easier once he’s off planet,” Melia said.

“Of course,” Avon said. “Fortunately Blake’s trial is today, so I won’t be waiting long.” He grinned wolfishly. “I expect to be fully recovered by the end of the week.

He finished his coffee one handed, hunting in his jacket with his other hand for a pen. Having found one, he began to write on the uppermost napkin.

“Thank you for your help today. I wonder if you could do me another favour-”

“What do I get in return for this one?” Melia asked. “Surely even you can’t have more than one felonous finance.”

“Technically Blake and I were never engaged,” Avon said. “So you’ll have to do it out of the goodness of your heart. Don’t say-“

“ _-what heart?”_ Melia said at the same time as Avon did, and Avon rolled his eyes as his brother grinned.

“Never mind. I want you to go to this address. Tell whoever answers the door that I’ll be over later this evening. I would give the message myself, but several large men are arriving at my flat shortly and I need to make sure they don’t break my teleport now I’ve finally got it working.”

He slid the napkin across the table towards Melia. Rather than an address, he’d written:

 _2 o’clock - man, black hair, red tunic_  
_6 o’clock - woman, blonde, green tunic  
_ _Stop them following me. I’ll have to owe you._

Melia’s eyebrows rose. His eyes flicked up to meet Avon’s and then back down to the napkin. “How intriguing,” he said, folding it delicately in half.

It was a risk, of course. Avon had no real reason to believe his brother would put loyalty to him over his loyalty to the Administration. Melia spent all day working with people who broke the law. If anyone knew the price that was paid for disobedience, he did. But at this point, Avon had no other option but to put his trust in someone else who hadn’t earned it yet. Fortunately, the worst that could happen was that Melia would tell the authorities he was acting suspiciously, and Avon knew they were already watching him, so he had little to lose.

“You’ll do it then?” he asked.

Melia inclined his head, and Avon stood up to go.

*

He didn’t know whether Melia had managed to stop his pursuers or not, or whether there were more that he hadn’t identified, but with only hours before Blake’s trial and extradition, Avon knew he didn’t have time to retrace his steps or otherwise ensure he’d shaken off anyone tracking him. 

He’d looked up Bran Foster’s address weeks ago, during the period he and Blake had been separated. He hadn’t done anything with it. In fact, he’d never intended to do anything with it, but for some reason he’d memorised the address without really wanting to.

Several times during the separation, Avon had walked past Foster’s building and wondered whether Blake was inside. It had been annoying and embarrassing at the time, but now it meant that he wouldn’t need to go to a computer terminal and look the address up. That could be invaluable. Blake had clearly not wanted anybody else to know who Avon should visit - or even that he _should_ visit anyone to find the truth. Desperation had driven him to make the hint less obscure than Avon might have liked. If Avon's flat had been monitored regularly, it was possible that someone would be able to find the key words 'too old for you' and, from there, Avon's destination now - but they’d have to sift through a lot of data before they got to that point. It would take hours or days, and hopefully he’d be long gone by then. And if he didn't manage to get the information in that time period, it would be too late anyway. Blake would be gone. 

It occurred to Avon as he entered the apartment block that he had no idea whether Foster would even be home. Presumably he kept roughly the same working patterns as Avon himself did, which meant he would be out. If he was out, then Avon had already lost. But he was here now, so he might as well proceed. And besides - he had no other ideas.

Avon knocked on the door. It made the same hollow thumping sound as his own door. He stepped back. Nothing happened for a moment, and he almost turned away - then the door slid open. It was old and moved slowly.

The man behind it was of a similar age to the door. He smiled at Avon, as though he was perfectly happy to see a stranger at his door in the middle of the day, but Avon could tell that behind his good humour he was tense. Only one of his hands was visible - the other was out of sight on the door button, ready to activate it and slam the door shut if Avon did anything wrong.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

It was the same man from the restaurant. His voice was slow and it had a strange lilt to it, very unlike the accents of most of the people Avon lived and worked around. He must have been transferred to this Dome quite recently, having spent most of his life working somewhere else.

“I don’t know,” Avon said. “But I doubt anyone else can.” That wasn’t a very good beginning - intriguing perhaps but alarming. He tried to backtrack. “I’m sorry. You don’t know me. My name is Avon-”

“ _Avon_?” Foster said, his smile becoming more genuine. “Oh. So, you’re Roj’s guy, are you?”

Avon considered denying this, or explaining that this wasn’t really how he saw himself or how Blake saw him, and that he thought he and Blake were probably on a break anyway since Blake was in prison and he'd told Blake he believed the murder charges. But given that his relationship with Blake was the only reason Foster _might_ talk to him, it was probably best to go along with it for now.

“Er,” he said. “Yes. That’s right.”

He found his hand being shaken with enthusiasm. “Good to meet you. I’m sorry, I should have recognised you - he’s talked about you often enough.”

“ _Has_ he?” Avon said. Interesting, but irrelevant information, under the circumstances. “Well, I’ve come to talk about him, so that’s probably a fair exchange. He told me you might know why someone would frame-”

“Hang on a minute,” Foster said, interrupting him. “He told me he was going to propose last night, but I don’t see a ring.”

“It’s in my pocket,” Avon said. “It’s also _not_ my most pressing-”

Foster chuckled, interrupting him again. “I didn’t think he’d chicken out. How’d he do it? Actually, wait-”he took his hand off the door button, “I’ll get my coat and you can tell me about it while we walk, OK?”

“That’s not necessary. I just want to ask-” Avon said, breaking off in disgust as the door slid shut on him.

“Great,” Foster’s voice said from the other side, muffled by the door. “Thanks for waiting. I’ll be out in a second.”

*

“There are bugs in my apartment,” he explained ten minutes later as they turned into the park.

Up until that point he’d ruthlessly cut off all of Avon’s attempts to talk about the murder with more questions about Avon’s matrimonial prospects until Avon had lapsed into a sullen silence. Now they were out on the grass he seemed willing to talk again.

“Yours too, I expect, given your relationship with Roj. By the way, how’re you holding up since his arrest?”

“How do you _think_?” 

“Devastated,” Foster said. “That's how I feel,” he added as Avon stared at him, "and you must be feeling it worse. Oh," he said with realisation, "oh, I’m sorry if I upset you back there, but it’s not a good idea to talk inside. We used to have this little restaurant, but the Feds hit it yesterday and cleaned out the whole place. Shouldn't have happened, so I'm guessing someone talked. We haven't figured out who, but Roj told me to watch Tarrant a while back." He shrugged wearily. "Anyway, we’re back to open spaces now.”

“I’ve been there,” Avon said. “To the restaurant, I mean."

“Nice place,” Foster said with an air of regret. He stopped at a bench and sat down, stretching out his legs. “Kid called Fell set up a couple of looped tapes to feed through regular mealtime conversations to the recording devices. No trigger words in the recordings. Meant you could say what you were actually thinking without having to come out here. Good food, too.

"But,” he said, pulling himself together and smiling again, “no use crying about it, is there? Everyone always knew it was risky. You wanted to ask me a question.” His expression changed to a knowing one. "And I'm guessing it's about Lana."

“Yes. She’s... not Blake’s wife,” Avon said, trying not to let himself hope what he was saying was true. She wasn’t Blake’s wife. It wasn’t a question. He should try and remember that.

“No,” Foster said. “At least - not as far as I know.”

“As far as you know.”

“Well, I can’t say for certain - I’ve only known him a few years - but I think he would have told me if he were married. I know about most of his youthful misdemeanours, so don’t worry yourself about that."

“I’m not worried.”

“No,” Foster said kindly. “I can see that.”

“At least,” Avon said, cursing himself and whatever expression had given him away, “I’m not worried about that. I _am_ worried I’ll be permanently associated with the murder of someone I’ve never met. Who was she?”

Foster sighed. “She was just a girl we should never have recruited. Roj was keen to have her with us. They knew each other from college - you probably know that by now - and because of her father’s connections. Now, I can say I didn’t like it, I thought her father was too dangerous, and that’s true - but I don’t want to put all the blame on him. The fact is that I went along with it, I let myself be convinced. We talked to her, Roj and I, on a bench much like this one. She came to a few meetings, she was friendly and interested in what we were doing. Now she’s dead.”

“What… _did_ you recruit her for?” Avon asked slowly. He could feel he was on the precipice, that everything was about to change.

Foster’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You mean you don’t know?”

“If I knew I wouldn’t have asked the question.”

“No, I don’t suppose you would have.” Foster shook his head. “Roj must have been afraid you’d say no to him, if you knew. Not fair on you, but he’s like that when he wants something a lot. He lets the ends justify the means. He’s much better usually - about telling people what they’re letting themselves in for, anyway.”

“You’re prevaricating,” Avon pointed out. “What did you recruit Lana Peters _for,_ Foster? A mixed football team? A chess club?”

“No,” Foster said awkwardly. He shifted his position on the bench so he was facing Avon properly. “All right, I’ll tell you - though it really should have come from him. About a year ago Roj Blake and I started something called the Freedom Party. You…haven’t heard of it, I assume.”

“…No,” Avon said, though his mind was already drawing out associations from the name and what Foster had said earlier, and what he knew about Blake.

“The Freedom Party is one of a number of activist groups operating in this and other Domes across the Federation,” Foster explained. “We believe that the Administration is wrong in many of its policies, chiefly those concerning slavery, distribution of wealth and labour, military conquest, and most importantly of all - freedom, of speech and action. Until recently we were entirely non-violent in our protest, but - well, your reaction to the name of our group should tell you why we’ve had to change our approach. We had only been able to reach a tiny amount of the population - and only those who already had some reason to mistrust the Administration. So, a few months ago, we began to target public buildings and public figures. We wanted to cause disruption. Disruption large enough that people would take notice of us - and the messages we left behind. As far as possible we’ve continued to be non-violent. Any buildings we’ve destroyed have been evacuated first. Nobody has died, and only a few people have been hurt.”

“Until now,” Avon said. It wasn’t all he had to say, but everything else seemed so huge and he grasped this small point to rebut. He wanted to tell Foster that he was mistaken. They must be talking about different Roj Blakes. The one who Avon worked with and slept with, the one he’d given his soul to, wasn’t a terrorist - he couldn’t be.

But he knew Foster was telling him was the truth. It all made sense - Blake’s interest in Avon's thoughts on the President’s statue, Blake’s nonchalance about Avon’s sabotage of the teleport, Blake’s sudden absences, the plasma-rifle burns on his broken arm. The bank explosion - that had been Blake. And the school, and - yes, of course - the teleport prototype, the writing on the wall. All of it. All Blake.

“Yes,” Foster said heavily. “But Lana wasn’t killed by our people. My guess is that she was killed by her father. I know she wanted to confront him about his work, and I know he’s a violent and cold man. Roj is becoming known in resistance circles, people are listening to him. Someone clever must have realised they could get rid of _him,_ without attracting attention, _and_ protect the Senator at the same time. The best part of it is that there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Nothing?” Avon said. “Then - you’re not planning a rescue?”

Foster put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Just because the evidence is faked doesn’t mean it’s not watertight. I’m sorry, son. I know it’s hard. I loved him like a brother. But Roj knew the risks better than anyone. He won’t have many regrets, except for leaving you.”

Avon shut his eyes, and tried to work through all the pieces of information he’d just received, logically and unemotionally. Eventually he said, “Blake definitely _isn’t_ married?”

“No. Not as far as I know,” Foster said, sounding confused. “I told you that, didn’t I? And like I said, I can’t be sure-”

“But you strongly _suspect_ he isn’t married,” Avon said. “And he hasn’t, _as far you know,_ been sleeping with hundreds of men during the past few months. In fact he hasn’t been sleeping with anyone - apart from me.”

“No,” Foster said. “No, no, that was a cover story. He used it to make contact with new members of the resistance without attracting attention. But - no. You knew that. You must have known.”

“You keep saying that,” Avon said flatly. “What do I have to say to convince you that I didn’t know any of this? Until today I would have told you that Roj Blake’s greatest ambition was to stick his cock into as many men as possible.”

Foster grimaced slightly, whether at the crudity of Avon’s statement or at the depths of his gullibility Avon couldn’t tell. “Well, I’m…ah, sure he did it to protect you.”

 _I know that_ , Avon thought. _He didn’t want me involved in any of this._

Out loud he said grimly, “He did it because it was convenient and because, as you pointed out, Foster, he was afraid of what might happen if I knew the truth. He’s a liar and a coward as well as a dangerous criminal.”

“If he is, he’s been justly punished for it,” Foster said gently.

“He’s been locked in a cell for one night,” Avon said. “I’d say that was getting off lightly, wouldn’t you? I’ll have to think of something more fitting before we rescue him.”

Foster blinked. “Before we - what?”

“I assume your earlier reluctance to rescue the man you regard as a brother was simply down to a dearth of ideas,” Avon said. “Fortunately I _do_ have an idea. Unfortunately, l need your cooperation to make it work. Do I have it?”

A slow smile spread over Foster’s lined face. “I can see why he likes you.”

Avon fought the urge to recite the catalogue of features Blake had mentioned back in the cell - _lips, attitude, humour, experience, intelligence, conscience,_ and tried not to grimace as Foster clapped him enthusiastically on the shoulder.

“All right, Kerr - what are we doing?”

***

Despite a tendency towards self-disgust and bad temper, Roj Blake was a generally optimistic man. You had to be, to think that you could change the galaxy, and up until this point Blake had been sure that it was, at the very least, worth _trying_ to change the galaxy. He had faith in his own abilities and in the abilities of those he had recruited, and he had faith that, if he managed to replace the corrupt Administration with something else, then it would be something better and that most people would welcome it.

People like Dev had occasionally called him dangerously idealistic, but Blake’s opinion was that if you didn’t think that what you were fighting for _was_ better and that you had a chance of achieving it, then all you were doing was lashing out at someone who had hurt you. That was understandable behaviour, of course, but not something Blake would have been able to go along with for long. What they were doing with the Freedom Party was too dangerous simply to be revenge.

For all that, Blake wasn’t unrealistic – he never gambled on luck, only on skill. He knew there was a chance that he and the Party would fail, in fact there was a very  _strong_ chance that they would fail - but there had been a chance they would win too.

If they did win, though, it looked increasingly likely that Blake wouldn’t be around to see that victory or contribute to it.

Without any way to mark it in this featureless cell, he’d lost track of time, but it seemed like it had been at least several hours since Avon had been here, his beautiful eyes cold and betrayed.

 _Why,_  Blake thought for the thousandth time,hadn’t he told Avon before? There had been so many opportunities, and now all he could hope for was that Avon cared enough to find Bran and let him explain. A stupid, selfish hope given that the knowledge would only endanger Avon or Bran or both. It wouldn’t even help Blake, except that he could die believing that perhaps Avon didn’t hate him, which somehow still seemed to justify what he’d done.

Blake shook himself, and pushed the thought away. He didn’t want to think about Avon as anything more than a marker for time at the moment.

The visit had been in the morning, just after Blake’s interview with his defence lawyer. That meant it must be only a few hours or even minutes until Blake would be tried and found guilty for murder. He had no doubt that the case would be tried quickly and that the evidence convicted him totally. The lawyer had made it very clear that Blake’s only real option was to plead insanity, but he hadn’t tried very hard to convince Blake he should take that option. It was clear he thought Blake deserved to be deported. Which, Blake thought wryly, he did - just not for _this_ crime.

A nasty voice inside his head pointed out that Lana would probably still be alive if not for him, and Blake pushed it away as he had the thoughts of Avon. The Administration had killed Lana for choosing freedom over slavery. It wasn’t his fault. All he’d done was speak to her, which was something he _should_ have had the right to do.

Once he was convicted for her murder, he'd have only a few more hours on Earth, penned in a holding cell with other murderers, smugglers and thieves. Then he would be marched onto a prison transport ship where he would spend the next eight months before being left to die on Cygnus Alpha. Assuming that he wasn’t killed before that, of course. The Freedom Party had unearthed reports that suggested almost half of all political prisoners allowed to immigrate to the outer worlds were killed before they left the home solar system. Blake hadn’t given up hope that he would somehow manage to turn this situation to his advantage, but his personal future looked about as bleak as it was possible for a man’s future to be.

 _And_ , Blake thought grimly, even if he did somehow miraculously escape, he’d finally destroyed his relationship with Avon so thoroughly that it was going to be impossible to mend it again. So it was difficult not to think – what was the point?

Avon was better off without him, though. The Administration would keep a watchful eye on Avon from now on, but he very obviously didn’t know anything. He hadn’t been involved in anything. He could get on with his life, continue to repress his better instincts, grow richer, find someone else to share his life with, someone else who didn’t challenge him or make him laugh, someone else to screw him until he screamed-

Frustrated and angry, Blake got to his feet and paced the small distance available to him in the cell, back and forth. Avon _was_ better off without him, he told himself, just as he had been better off not knowing the truth. If Avon survived, Blake could consider this a job well done. If Bran survived and the revolution survived, he could consider his death a necessary sacrifice. That was true, it was all true, and it was all so mindlessly unfair. He’d never hated the Administration as strongly as he hated them now, and he was disgusted with himself for reacting more strongly to a threat to his own life and the idea of his lover in someone else’s arms than he did to institutionalised slavery, even as he knew he was only human, and that he hadn’t slept the night before, or eaten, and that Avon hated him for reasons outside of his control, and that he was being framed to support the system he’d tried to destroy.

The door to his cell slid open, and Blake swung towards the trooper so violently that the man brought his gun up to protect himself.

“ _Yes?_ What is it?” 

“Your trial is about to begin,” the trooper told him, the black gas-mask modulating out any alarm that might have crept into his voice.

“Good,” Blake retorted. “I want this _farce_ over with.”

More slowly than he would have liked, he pulled himself back together, gradually drawing his anger back inside himself so that all that would show on the surface was a low simmer of resentment. He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of being able to broadcast his loss of self control. They already had enough material to discredit him with.

He gestured chivalrously towards the open door and even managed a mocking smile towards the trooper. “Lead on then.”

*

The tribunal chamber was a dull grey colour, presumably to emphasise to a credulous population that justice wasn’t showy or something to get excited about, riot about, or detonate buildings about. It was simply routine, like going to the bank or filing your taxes. Everyone was entitled to justice, even the very lowest. The only problem was that the Federation had no idea what _justice_ was, or if they did it was only so that they knew what it was they were perverting. 

In centre of the room was the justice machine that would decide Blake’s fate. On either side of it stood the counsel for the prosecution and the defence, and above the machine sat the arbiter, who would pronounce Blake’s sentence. There were various other people in the room, too, troopers and hangers on, but these were the only important ones.

“Have you the accused been made aware of the charges that are laid against you?” the arbiter asked after the initial introductions had been made. She was an older woman, with slate grey hair that matched the chamber. She looked slightly bored - but then the outcome of the trial had already been decided, so that didn't seem too unreasonable a reaction. “And do you fully understand the nature and gravity of those charges?”

“ _False_ charges,” Blake said. She didn’t respond or move onto the next item, and Blake sighed. What was the point? This whole trial was rigged. He might as well give the route response that was required and, as he'd told the trooper, get it over with.

“Yes.”

Blake’s defence and prosecution lawyers identified themselves and satisfied themselves as to the evidence being fairly obtained. Blake wondered, watching them, whether they did believe that, or whether one or both of them were working with the people who had fabricated the evidence they were now presenting. It was impossible to say - both lawyers (both men in their thirties) were stern and grave, and there was little to choose between them.

“Is the accused satisfied that his defence has been fully and fairly prepared?” the arbiter asked Blake.

“I’m sure the defence did what he could,” Blake said calmly. “Under the circumstances.”

“Then let it be seen that the evidence for the prosecution is sealed and approved by the defence. Let it be seen that the evidence for the defence is sealed and approved by the prosecution.”

The two lawyers drew out the evidence spheres from their boxes and approached the justice machine. Each of them placed the other's sphere into the waiting slot - the defence (that Blake was insane and shouldn’t be held responsible for murdering his wife) on the left; the prosecution (that Blake had cold-bloodedly murdered his wife so he could marry Avon and stay on Earth, where he would probably murder Avon later for money or power or whatever it was) on the right. Frankly Blake wasn’t sure he cared which outcome was chosen - they were both as bad as each other and neither was true.

“Let the matter be assessed and may justice prevail,” the arbiter intoned.

The sphere on the left lit up for a moment, then the light went off. It reappeared in the sphere on the right, flicked back thoughtfully to the other sphere before returning again to the right, and then the left again, as the machine weighed the evidence it had been given.

Bored, Blake cast his eyes over the other people in the room, who were mostly watching the justice machine make its decision. Only one man, standing at the side, looked up as Blake’s gaze reached him.

 _Avon’s legal counsel,_ Blake realised as the man winked at him before looking back at the justice machine and the arbiter. _What the hell is he doing here?_

Blake turned back too in time to see the flickering light in the justice machine’s spheres stop and flash three times - in the left sphere. _Not guilty._

A low but ever increasing rumbling of noise began around the courtroom as almost everyone present tried to whisper to his neighbour about the decision and then had to raise his voice to be heard over everyone else. The decision was clearly completely unexpected, and Blake was barely able to repress his laughter.

“Objection!” the prosecution shouted. “The evidence has been tampered with.”

“How dare you!” the defence retorted.

“Order,” the arbiter shouted over the top of them. “Order! _Order_ , I say!”

Words began appearing one after the other on the large screen behind the arbiter. Had he been proved guilty, the screen would have summarised Blake’s crimes, but the words that were scrolling across it now were quite different. They read:

_Sentence: Not guilty._

_Evidence has been found to suggest the records of Roj Blake’s marriage to Lana Peters was added to Central records 14.3 hours before the current timestamp, rather than 5.93 years ago, as claimed by the prosecution._  
_Evidence has been found that suggests the victim was killed 2.5 hours before the time given by the prosecution._  
_Evidence has been found that Roj Blake was attending a political rally outside the city between 18:15 and 23:38 on the night of the murder. He could not therefore have returned to the scene of the crime for either the victim’s alleged time of death or the actual time of death._  
_Evidence has been found that the security guard Lanning was admitted to the Ministry of Alteration for treatment at 08:08 this morning. His evidence is therefore discounted.  
_ _Evidence has been found that the security recordings of the victim’s residence and that of the victim’s father, Senator Wulf Peters, have been altered. The footage apparently recorded at these times was in fact recorded 3 days before the murder._

_It is the recommendation of this court that Senator Peters be brought in for further questioning regarding this case._

_It is the recommendation of this court that Roj Blake be fined 300 credits for trespassing outside the Dome (category 4 offence)._

A hand took hold of Blake’s elbow, and Avon's counsel began steering him out of the chamber, waving away the troopers who seemed uncertain as to whether or not they should stop him.

“They’re never sure what to do when someone’s innocent,” he confided to Blake as they reached the doors. “Ral Melia. My brother asked me to give you this,” he said, pressing something hard and shiny into Blake’s hand. “He thinks it would look better on you.”

Blake opened his hand, and saw the engagement ring he’d tried to give Avon. He looked up at the other man sharply as he closed his fingers around it. “Your brother-?”

“Kerr Avon. See, the nose?” The other man twisted his head and indicated his profile, which did look vaguely like Avon’s, Blake supposed. Melia grinned. “Classic Roman. He also asked me to give you _this_ ,” Melia said, moments before his fist slammed into Blake’s face.

Blake staggered back, clutching his nose, his eyes watering. “What the-?”

“This verdict is a travesty of justice!” Avon’s brother shouted, feinting towards Blake again. “A _fine_? A lousy  _fine_? This new evidence is _false_! Roj Blake abused my brother’s trust. He _ruined_ my family's reputation. He's a murderer, a liar and a common criminal!” Troopers caught his arms and held Melia back as he continued to protest. Other observers and legal representatives clustered in closer to try and get a better look at what was going on. “I demand that the evidence be re-examined!” Melia shouted.

It was completely bizarre behaviour, and so Blake wasn’t too surprised when he caught Melia’s eye and saw him look pointedly towards the ring in Blake’s hands.

 _He thinks it would look better on you._ That obviously made no sense either, but (when he thought about it) nothing that had happened in the trial chamber today had made much sense. Blake pushed the ring onto one of his fingers.

For a moment nothing happened. Melia continued to shout abuse at Blake, the prosecution and the defence continued to shout at each other, the crowd continued to surge forwards.

Then Blake heard a strange wobbling ringing sound. It seemed to come from somewhere outside of the chamber and yet inside Blake himself. At the same time, he felt a tug in the region of his chest.

 _Ah,_ he thought as his atoms began to rearrange themselves, _Avon must have finished the teleport. And, apparently, a remote recall device, disguised as a ring. Now that_ is _clever._

He grinned as he dematerialised and was still grinning as he rematerialised in the familiar bay of prototype thirteen. It had worked. It had really worked. How extraordinary.

Rather than looking out into Avon’s living room, though, he seemed to have ended up on the cargo hold of a small space-freighter. It looked old, but well maintained - the coppery tones of the walls polished to brightness, the equipment neatly coiled in racks, and boxes of cargo stacked against the walls. There was one open hatchway leading off into the rest of the ship, and Bran Foster was sitting behind the teleport control bank, leaning over the unit’s inbuilt comm. device.

 _“We got him,”_ he said into the microphone. “Take us out.” Then he looked up, and beamed at Blake as he rose to his feet. “Welcome aboard, Roj.”

“ _Bran_ ,” Blake said, laughing with surprise and delight as Bran reached out to pull him into a hug. “What’s on Earth is going on? I was just found innocent.”

“I know,” Bran said, “but we all thought it was safer to remove you anyway. If they didn’t get you on this, they’d just trump up something else.”

“Or kill me outright,” Blake agreed as the ship began to move away from Earth. “What I can’t understand is how it all happened. What’s the teleport doing on this ship?”

“The Administration were kind enough to pack it into a van for us,” Bran explained. “After that, all we needed to do was hijack the van and drive to the space dock, where I asked a nice young lady to give us a ride in her blockade runner. Your Avon did the rest.”

Blake grinned, though his heart had done a strange flipflop at the sound of Avon’s name. “I wouldn't let him hear you calling him that, if I were you."

“Why not?” Avon’s voice said from open hatchway. “I think I’ve earned it by now, don’t you?”

His voice was calm and measured, but his chest rose and fell as though he’d run the length of the ship to get here. His hair was slightly tousled. Blake stared at him - at a loss, completely, for what to say. There was so much and he had no idea where to start, particularly not while Bran was standing next to him like a proud father. He found himself saying:

“Arguably. But I’m surprised you _want_ people to call you that.”

Avon climbed in through the hatch. “Are you?” he said, coming closer. “Is that because… you think I fear commitment, or because you think I’m still angry that you lied to me about your promiscuous behaviour, or because you think I’m still angry that you lied to me about your extra-legal activities?”

“All three,” Blake told him. “And _,_ of course, I _did_ get you arrested last night. And you do now seem to be on the run from the law. If I were you, I’d probably be quite angry about both of those, too.”

“Don’t worry,” Avon said. “I am.”

“That’s what I thought,” Blake told him.

“I’m also angry that you tried to get me to move to Mars, rather than asking me to keep you here,” Avon said. “That was stupid. Everyone hates Mars.”

Blake sighed in exaggeration, though he could feel the tension in his chest loosening. “Now you’re just getting personal.”

Bran patted Blake on the shoulder. “I’ll leave you two alone.” He climbed out through the hatch, with a passing grin. He let the door clang shut after him.

“If you’re going to hit me, ”Blake said as Avon closed in on him, “I should tell you that your brother already did.”

Avon looked surprised, but pleased. He raised his chin inquisitively and narrowed his eyes to inspect Blake’s face for signs of bruising. “Hard?”

“Fairly.”

“Hm,” Avon said with a smile. “I didn’t think he’d really do it. It’s interesting - this experience has brought us together as a family. I almost regret the fact that I won’t see him again.”

“Well, who knows? Maybe you will,” Blake said, keeping his voice steady although Avon was very close to him now and he’d almost admitted he was going to stay with Blake in exile, even though Blake didn’t see what he’d done to deserve that loyalty. “After all,” he said as Avon continued to eye his mouth, “we’ll have to come back at some point.”

“Oh, will we? And when will that be? When we fancy a change from _not_ being executed?”

Blake made a face. “Earth is the Federation’s major power base, Avon. Its _heart_. If we want to destroy the monster, we have to tear out that heart-”

“ _We_ ,” Avon said. “Who’s we, Blake?”

“Well, it’s me and Bran,” Blake said carefully. “And it’s you, if you want to join-”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t want to return to Earth.”

“I don’t want to join your revolution,” Avon told him. “And no, I don’t want to return to Earth. Frankly I don’t even want to think about it or talk about it. And you have no _right_ to expect anything else, Blake. You never said this was what I was signing up for.”

“Believe me, I know,” Blake said. He felt like Avon had kicked him in the stomach, as though the air had rushed out of his lungs suddenly. “And I _don’t-_ _”_

Avon took another step in and kissed him, his lips opening under Blake’s, his hands cupping Blake’s face and pulling him closer. The teleport bay they had built together dug into Blake’s back. Blake wanted to melt into him, but part of him was still convinced Avon was only kissing him now to make the pain of his leaving greater.

With one hand, he pushed Avon back gently until there was a gap between Avon’s mouth and his, although Avon’s forehead was still resting against his, Avon’s nose still brushed his cheek, and Avon’s hands were still in his hair. He could still feel Avon’s eyelashes flickering below his own.

“But I’m damned if I won’t do it anyway,” Avon breathed against his skin. “I don’t think I could stop myself, do you?”

Blake smoothed a thumb over Avon’s cheekbone, feeling weak with relief. “Well, I certainly _hope_ so. If I’m making a stupid decision, I want to know about it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have gone along with that statue plan of yours, if that’s what you mean,” Avon said, wry laughter in his voice. “Assuming, of course, that you’d told me about it.”

“Yes,” Blake said grimacing. “Sorry. That _was_ stupid. In fact, while I’m at it, I’m sorry about everything we discussed earlier. I should have trusted you. I _wanted_ to trust you, but it wasn’t just my life I was putting at risk.”

“At last,” Avon said. “I thought I’d still be waiting for that apology in twenty years. In comparison, twenty minutes seems almost acceptable.”

“Glad I can still surprise you,” Blake said, stroking bits of Avon’s hair behind his ear. “Thank you for rescuing me, too.”

Avon turned his head to press a kiss to Blake’s palm and caught sight of the ring that Blake was still wearing around the fourth finger of his right hand. He smiled and Blake could feel a long dimple forming under his outstretched fingers. “I see you accepted my re-proposal.”

“Yes. Well, it was that or get deported to Cygnus Alpha,” Blake said. “Or worse - Mars.” Avon grinned at that and Blake said with faux-seriousness, “I _am_ willing to go through with it, though, if you are.”

“Generous,” Avon said.

“Self-interested,” Blake growled. “While I was waiting in my cell earlier, the thing that upset me most, more than the revolution falling apart without me, more than never seeing my family again, which I barely thought about - the thing that upset me _most,_ Avon,was the idea of you going off with anyone else.”

“Now you know what it feels like,” Avon pointed out.

“I _said_ I was sorry.”

“I remember,” Avon said. “It was very moving and entirely unprompted. Now why don’t you do something useful, like find a Federation officiant or a ship’s captain willing to conduct the ceremony before I change my mind? That’s probably about ten minutes at this rate.”

Blake raised an eyebrow. “This _is_ a ship,” he pointed out. “Presumably it _has_ a captain, even if she is a smuggler.”

“Presumably,” Avon agreed. “You have nine and a half minutes by the way.”

Blake tugged him into a brief, fierce kiss, and let go of him. “All right. Which way to the flight deck?”

“Left out of the hatch,” Avon said, letting Blake kiss him again. “Oh, and Blake,” he said as Blake swung the wheel to open the hatch door, “it’s worth bearing in mind that if you lie to me again, or omit the truth on this sort of scale, I will divorce you before the words ‘I meant to tell you’ are out of your mouth. Is that understood?”

Blake spread his hands expansively. “Avon, I promise that from now on you’ll always know exactly what is on my mind as soon as I do. Now - can I go?”

Avon made a face. “It’s not a good idea to make promises you can’t keep.”

“All right,” Blake said laughing. “All right, I take it back, then. I promise that from now on I’ll tell you almost everything important... at least a few hours before I act on it. Satisfied?”

“Barely,” Avon said, but he was smiling.

Terrible things had happened in the last twenty-four hours, but now Blake felt like anything was possible. In that moment of bright optimism, he grinned at Avon and let the hatch door swing open. “I promise I will try and make you happy, if at all possible,” he said. “I promise that we will defeat the Federation together, and replace it with something better. I promise a better life for everyone in this galaxy. And I promise, Avon, that I’ll be back in nine minutes and I’ll marry the hell out of you.”

“Eight and a half,” Avon called after him as he ran down the ship’scorridors, and Blake grinned and picked up his pace.

***

As Blake’s footsteps faded away, Avon turned slowly round in the cargo hold. He took in the teleport equipment that he’d completely failed to sell to anyone for any money, and he took in the neatly arranged equipment that was probably ten years old. He took in Bran Foster’s suitcase (probably full of seditious material) and the boxes of contraband goods that, if discovered, would lead to a set of one-way tickets to Cygnus Alpha for everyone onboard this ship.

“What have I let myself in for?” Avon asked the empty room.

A pipe creaked, but otherwise there was silence. Avon fingered his lower lip, remembering the feel of Blake’s mouth pressed against his. He smiled - and went to ask the same question of the man who would answer it for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't mark this as an AU, because I wanted it to be a surprise, but obviously - it is an AU. The point that we diverge from canon is in that very first scene. In canon Avon forced through his application at the bank. He met and lost Anna, and went to work for the Aquitar Project almost a year after Blake had left. Avon was caught embezzling four years later and sentenced to Cygnus Alpha. He did not meet Blake until the 'London'.
> 
> If he had met him earlier, things would have been very different.


End file.
